Local attractions....

The past few weeks we have taken a few pictures as we have been out and I thought I would post.

For those of you who haven't been to our house, we don't live in the City of Jenks. We live outside of town a mile or two. We live less than 1/4 mile away from the Perrymany Ranch . The Perryman Family owned 250,000 acres of land prior to Oklahoma officially becoming a state in 1907. Our house is on a small sliver of that land. The Perryman Ranch is all that remains of the land that is officially owned by the Perryman family (approximately 20 acres). The land is still roamed by Longhorn Steers and 1 White Buffalo. We think the white buffalo is really cool looking since they are so rare and considered sacred by Native Americans. (Info on white buffalo if you want to read) The steers and buffalo roam the entire property so we don't get to see them all of the time. The ranch backs up to another subdivision and when we take Nacho (the dog) for a walk we can sometimes see the animals up close.

Here is a couple pics of the buffalo...

Another cool little factoid on the Perryman ranch is that they have active oil wells on the property. One of those pumps is actually 150-200 feet from our house. Jen did a little research a year and a half ago on the pumps since she works for an oil and gas company. She found out that the leases for the wells (when they first drilled) were in 1916. There are currently 3 pumps still active on the lease. As of a year and a half ago they pumps were still producing 10 barrels a day!! So, we are sitting on a gold mine. Unfortunately, we don't have any mineral rights for the oil so that we could benefit from the ridiculous prices of oil! When people visit, they think its weird that we have an oil pump so close to our house. There is actually a house between us and the pump (no one is officially living in the house though-wonder why?!?!) We have gotten used to the noise that the pump makes (its really not that noisy) and we occasionally smell the crude when we walk by the pump. We did have a little bit of excitement last summer because a hose busted and crude was spraying on the ground.

This weekend when we were out and about we saw something strange in the sky and weren't sure what it was. As we got closer, we figured out what it was. It was a helicopter that was placing air-conditioning units on top of the Creek Nation Casino that is being built. It was a big spectacle because there were cars pulled off on the side of the road around the casino. We decided to stop and be a part of the madness and take a few pictures. We couldn't figure out why they were using the helicopter instead of a crane, but we figured out once we saw where the supplies (air-conditioners) were being staged compared to where the building being constructed is.