Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Who Says The Dry Old Oklahoma Panhandle Isn't Exciting

So you think that the Oklahoma Panhandle is boring.  Most of the time it's dry and the farmers are sitting around waiting for rain.  And the only time they get it is usually right before harvest, then they can't get their tractors into the field.  And Walt and I trek out there for a simple expedition to test out his new drone.

But first, we start in our neighbor's yard.  This is simple and easy enough, their yard is large and we know their neighbors so we have some space to maneuver.  But nothing is simple for Walt and me, and we shoot the drone up.  The sky is blue, the wind is slight, there's a lone kite way up in the sky minding his own business, what could happen.  Well, we immediately found out that was not alone Kite and as we flew way too close to a nest, out came about seven kites to dive-bomb the drone and for a first-time pilot, that was very scary.



About 1:24 into the video, the kites started dive bombing the drone.  Walt, fortunately, got the drone home and in one piece, so why not try that again - without traveling near the nest, so the day continued, but fortunately either the kites got used to the drone, or they didn't feel threatened anymore.

After that, Walt decided he needed some wide open spaces to fly his drone, and nothing better than his farm, so we took off to the panhandle - you know that DRY, HOT part of Oklahoma?.....well, not when we were there.  The first night we had some rock and roll weather, and there's nothing like experiencing a good ole fashioned summer thunderstorm in the high plains than a trailer.  That thing rocked and rolled for a long time, till we decided we'd had enough and took off for the storm shelter, which was a good thing, cause the trailer collapsed off the hitch blocks (those are the things in front that keep the trailer level), and we thought we'd worry about it later.  The dog was not a happy camper but figured it was better to keep the gritching to a minimum cause he really didn't have a choice.

However the next morning it was beautiful and sunshiny just like the song......"Oh what a beautiful moooooooorniiiiiing!"  And the corn cooperated being as high as an elephant's eye.  Walt got some stunning video of one circle of corn and another circle of cotton.  We had more storms, but fortunately figured out how to anchor the trailer really well, and weathered the other storms quite well, and the weather was actually cold some mornings.  For the end of July, the low 60's were pretty neat.

This may be a little like watching grass grow, but it is a beautiful video of the breadbasket of America.  In the bottom right corner is a little "YouTube" logo, and click that, cause both these videos are in high def and it's much more fun to view that way.