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Published: August 15th 2012
Oh what a day! We started out early by heading into a town called Picher, Oklahoma. This is town that the kids have wanted to visit once they saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel about it. Here is the wiki informatio on it:
"Formerly a major national center of
lead and
zinc mining at the heart of the
Tri-State Mining District, over a century of unrestricted subsurface excavation dangerously undermined most of Picher's town buildings and left giant piles of
toxic metal-contaminated
mine tailings (known as
chat) heaped throughout the area. The discovery of the cave-in risks, groundwater contamination and health effects associated with the chat piles and subsurface shafts—particularly an alarming 1996 study which showed
lead poisoning in 34%!o(MISSING)f the children in Picher
—eventually prompted a mandatory
evacuation and buyout (via
eminent domain) of the entire township by the
Environmental Protection Agency and the incorporation of the town (along with the similarly contaminated satellite towns of
Treece and
Cardin) into the
Tar Creek Superfund site."
The place was extremely interesting and quite spooky. We took pictures, looked at the mine tailings and left. Our next stop is Coffeyville, Kansas. This is home to the last bank raid of the Dalton Gang. We were able to see
where they came in, robbed the bank and then tried to flee and were shot dead. Very interesting piece of history!
Next stop for the day was the Little House on the Prairie. This was the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder during her Little House on the Prairie book. I read these books in the 2nd grade and loved them. I have all of them in the series....my kids won't read them though..this was kind of "ho-hum" for them but I loved it!
Now..this is where the fun begins! I didn't realize that this southern portion of Kansas has no real freeways, it is all two lane highways with some divided highways. OMG! The truck traffic was awful and all the speed up slow down stuff drove us crazy! We are looking for an alternate route today to Colorado, but may need to just bite the bullet and drive these crazy roads!
We have changed plans yet again and decided to go back to Wendover, Nevada for our last night before heading home. The pool was awesome, the weather perfect for me and the rooms are huge. Long drive home for me, but I promised Theo I
would drive the 12 hours home and he could rest....oh what fun that will be for me!
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