More medicine
Discover more of Medicine Park with columnist and Real Estate Editor Richard Mize as he tours the charming town in southwestern Oklahoma.
Atrained observer, I am, but after nearly 30 years of living just 90 minutes or so from Medicine Park, it was just a couple of Sundays ago that I observed its cute and quirky downtown — because I'd never turned off the dang highway.
Call me embarrassed. My wife, too, who is from Wichita Falls, Texas, where I also lived for 10 years. Neither of us is a stranger to Mount Scott, the Wichita Mountains and the Wildlife Refuge. But for all the trips we've made, neither of us had ventured downtown.
Score one for Medicine Park — a big one, a big write-up in addition to this one, from a chagrined longtime Texas-now-Oklahoma newsman — thanks to the internet.
As some of y'all know, I'm a part-time pastor (Trinity Presbyterian, 2301 NE 23, y'all come.) I'd let a Sunday off slip up on me with no plans.
So, on Aug. 11, Dolores and I started wondering what we could do the next day, Sunday. To Google! Bartlesville? Tallgrass Prairie Preserve? Red Rock Canyon? Too early for the Talimena Drive. Jake's Ribs at Chickasha? (Hey, I count it as a destination).
Somehow I stumbled onto www.mcoliveoil.com, Medicine Creek Olive Oil Co., 213 E Lake Drive — in Medicine Park?
She Who Is made the call. Medicine Park it was (Jake's, between here and there, made it easy). We had no idea. Tom and Kim Dyer, proprietors of the olive oil shop, were chatty. Plus, asking questions is an occupational hazard of mine, and before we knew it, the Dyers let us know how much more Medicine Park had to offer: more shops, rental cabins, food, special events.
My preacher's hat off for the day, my newsman's hat went on, and off we went:
To The Purple Thistle, to White Buffalo Trading Post (where I bought a small souvenir tepee by Comanche artist Tim Turtle), to check out a swimming hole, to smile at a "No Profanity" sign, then over to RedNeck Candles, to here, to there, to'ing and fro'ing with me snapping pictures and grabbing video with my phone.
But wait, there's more. You can't see it all in one leisurely day — counting the obligatory drive to see the buffalo and Texas longhorns and prairie dogs on the wildlife refuge, and to Mount Scott.
We shall return. My Jake's plans were unabated this time. Next time, we'll eat in Medicine Park.
And I especially want to check out the new Medicine Park Aquarium & Natural Sciences Center and its seven Fishes of Oklahoma Galleries: Sunfishes; True Basses; Catfishes; Trouts, Pikes & Perches; Bio-Diversity; Jurassic Fishes; and Marvels & Mysteries.
Maybe we'll head back next weekend, but not too late Saturday night and not on Sunday, of course, for the Friday-Sunday Blues Ball. It's free. Bring a lawn chair. No outside alcohol.
Whatever you think of Medicine Park — and its old, once-but-no-longer deserved reputation as a has-been did linger with me all these years — if you haven't been there lately, think again.
You have to see it to get it, and you have to get off the highway to the refuge to see it, and I belatedly recommend it.