Anyway, to give him a chance to enjoy Oklahoma, we drove down to Witchita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, most of which was on fire. However, we did see a lot of awesome nature and I got a sunburn. I was overconfident in the absolutely BEAUTIFUL day - while it was pleasantly cool, the sun still emitted UV rays.
Our first stop was Crater Lake, near the Cache entrance. This is where today's title comes from, as there was a young girl, perhaps 10-12 wearing an awesome t-shirt that read "Think Science." My kind of child.
We did eventually drive over to Medicine Park and up Mt. Scott, which had a lovely view, as usual. I saw some cool (dry) rock pools in some of the boulders. When it finally rains, these will fill with water and contain their own unique plankton community. This is where we can study questions on chaos in nature - i.e. if a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, are there tornadoes in Texas? Those are some really interesting questions, as it only takes a tiny tiny difference in starting conditions to wind up with two totally different endpoints.
Anyway, after Mt. Scott, we went down to the edge of one of the reservoirs where a herd of free-range longhorns were hanging out with a herd of bison. Both had young with them and it was neat to see the gangly "little" bison with their tiny horns just sprouting from their heads. The longhorn calves were cute too; we stuck around long enough to see them start feeding from their mothers.
Finally, before heading back for my birthday dinner, I saw this really funky little bee. It was all fuzzy yellow with really long legs and a long proboscis, almost like a mosquito. You can see my picture below. Like a true science nerd, I took about ten or so shots of the little guy. I thought it was really cool.
Vacuum update: My parents bought me a DYSON for my birthday. I vacuumed the entire house last night and threw away enough dust and hair to construct another cat. That vacuum is awesome!
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