Sulphur - It's more than a bad smell

This weekend, my mom and I went on a trip to the Sulphur area. This was our first trip with just the two of us. It was a really good time. On Friday, we went to Turner Falls, Arbuckle Wilderness (see cute animal pics) and to see my grandmother's cousin, Alpha. Alpha is in her nineties and still lives alone in her own home. She very witty and actually quite pretty for her age.

The inn we stayed at was unique to say the least. The innkeeper, Charlie, had a scraggly gray beard down to his chest. He wore a blue sailor's cap that had bits of debris stuck to the top and sides. The lobby walls were covered with paraphernalia from Sulphur's glory days in the 1920's, and musical instruments along with an assortment of gourds painted to look like people.

The "interesting" thing about all the guest rooms is that they don't have private bathrooms. Each room has a toilet and a sink that is partitioned from the rest of the room with a small cloth divider or a piece of furniture. The rooms don't have their own showers either - the showers were all downstairs in a public restroom.

But the inn did have some really cool features - like two indoor pools that were really warm. And, another nice feature is at night the innkeepers make a bonfire and the guests gather around it and chat or play the musical instruments together. We got to know a young military couple who'd lived in Germany and Bahrain among other places.

On Saturday, my mom took me to see where my great, great grandmother is buried. Her tombstone had become covered with grass and soil. We wouldn't have been able to find it except my mom remembered the general area. After pulling out lots of grass and removing dirt, we were able to see the three flat stones that laid over her grave. The name Mary Day was scratched into the stone and just barely legible. A few yards behind Mary Day's grave was the tree where my mother had sprinkled my grandmother's ashes nearly ten years ago.

After leaving the cemetery, we went to Chickasaw National Park. It's very pretty there - lots of wild flowers and streams.

Then we stopped by some antique shops in Davis, a small town near Sulphur. While in Davis, we ate lunch at a place called Hot Tamales (quite tasty) and on our way out we stopped by the Indian casino and lost a total of $6 on the 25 cent machines. Not too shabby since we brought in $15 (we won $9 back). We're practically pros!