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thayssharumrn — Wild Flowers in Arkansas
Published: 2008-04-23 20:13:56 +0000 UTC; Views: 164; Favourites: 15; Downloads: 0
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Photo taken on Talamena Drive.Related content
Comments: 12
As in up by Queen Wilamena State Park? That's awfully close to home for me!
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That's it...I love that drive.
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I am from Mount Ida, situated about halfway between Mena and Hot Springs... It's been quite some time since I went over that drive... now that I think of it, we did it on May 3, 1999, when we were living on the outskirts of Oklahoma City (actually Midwest City)... We had been home for the weekend and were heading back west and I wanted to do that drive... We stopped at ate in Poteau, OK(?) (is that right? no.. hmmm)
Anyhow, there were some storm clouds there, but by the time we left KFC it was in the back of our minds... by the time we wandered our way up to I40 and headed west, it was overcast and gloomy, but we didn't think anything of it...
We got all the way to Shawnee and it started raining... I turned on the radio, then... and they were playing music.. someone broke in and announced that people in a certain area should not light flames up because the plant that added the smell to natural gas had to be shut down...
I remember thinking that was weird, but oh well... We got to the first OKC exit (Midwest City) and a block or two up, everything was pitch black (it was dark by this point) and some cops had some streets barricaded off...
I thought - so naive - that they must have had some event going on - like a parade or something - and kept driving north... we finally went west a ways to midwest blvd, and on to our apartment... and the power was out.
Not having been there long, we didn't even know where flashlights were, so we got back in the car and drove down a mile or two to Wal Mart.. .and they were shut down, no power. But the Albertsons next door had power, so we went inside.
All the regular flashlights were gone. There were no C or D cell batteries anywhere. All we managed to find were some penlights, and we bought two... I stopped a military guy from Tinker AFB and asked him what was going on, and then he told me all about all the tornadoes that had come through...
the next morning the power came back on and we turned on the tv... this huge storm (the May 3rd tornadoes that will be forever etched into Oklahoma's history) had wiped out huge sections of southwest Oklahoma, stopping 1.5 miles from our apartment, skipped a lot of miles, and hit again up toward Tulsa ways, knocking out an outlet center in some small town up that way, amongst other destruction.....
Months later when they un-barricaded some of the neighborhoods, so you could go through - it was the closest thing to a war zone I have ever in my life seen... cars upside down, trees and houses ripped down.
I never want to see something like that again.
------ I suppose this should be a blog/journal article... I didn't mean to ramble on but the whole Talamena drive brought back the memory, I suppose...
Oh and at the time I was working with *okiehillgirl and her family's house was in a neighborhood where houses were destroyed - there's was slightly damaged but not too bad...
----
erase all that. 
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I remember the storm, it was devastating. We had a really bad one in April 1996 [link] I hate tornadoes. Anyway, yes Talamena drive is a beautiful drive, I can't wait until this fall so we can go and see all of the beautiful trees. Do you miss Arkansas?
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I remember about that tornado.. we were in Alabama at the time...
Arkansas is home.. PA is where I lay my head.
I do like it here, but I lived there for 150 years. (time from the time my great great something grandfather settled there in the valley where I grew up outside Mt Ida)..
I only moved away because I needed a job, a life, something. I had every intention of doing my air force time and heading home. Instead I found another job.
This year, I get a 17% raise (after years of abysmal ones)... It's hard to walk away from steady employment. I'll be back one of these days.
Yeah, I miss it.
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Absolutely love this shot. The contrasts are fantastic. A must fav for sure. Great job here.
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Thanks, glad you liked it
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Thanks, I just love wildflowers!
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