Marking our territory

I think I'll go backwards today, since I want to put the most exciting part of the day up front. So, I'll talk about tomorrow and this morning later. Got that?

My excitement arises because of the new additions to Afton Station. Last night, I picked up the Oklahoma Route 66 Association's street stencil. This morning, wonderful Ron M. used it to paint two stencils the pavement under the portico in front of the Station, while lazy me stood by and "supervised". Thank you, Ron!
We plan to do a few more stencils on the apron in front of the Packard side of the Station and possibly on a window or two, but we ran out of paint. Of course, we used striping paint, since cars will be running over the images. After this photo was taken, Ron painted out the "stencil" lines. They look GREAT!
Early this morning on the way to Afton, we spied the elderly running man (see Thursday's post) hoofing it all alone just east of Chelsea. I turned the car around and we pulled over to talk to him. He said he is faring well, and he's doing his run to inspire other senior citizens to never give up, follow their dreams, and get out and exercise! Well, I'm pretty good with the first two. To refresh your memory, he's 71 years old, and he's running all of Route 66.
From day to day, I just never know what to expect at Afton Station. After a week of entertaining many families with small children, today's visitor log consisted of almost all senior citizens. There was one man with two teen-agers, but otherwise most folks hovered in the 60 to 85 range, and most were men, a high percentage being local. We greeted folks from Marshall MO, Anderson MO, Hull IL, Galena KS, Bullhead City AZ, Jenning CA, Pittsburgh KS, and folks from Afton, Blanchard, Wann, Miami, Pryor, and Quapaw OK. Lots of car talk today, possibly because many of our visitors were headed to a big car show in Vinita. Tattoo Man and Betty were also both in attendance.

The Afton water tower is now shrouded in guy wires. We're not entirely sure what they're all for, but Ron and I drove over there on our way out of town, and it appears that they'll be used to hoist platforms up the tower, probably for ease in painting it. But an Afton person who visited today said she heard that the tower was infested with worms and bugs (shudder!) so perhaps there'll be a purging, too. (We don't drink the water in Afton anyway, since I've received official notification that it's not entirely safe.) Talk about a town with infrastructure problems!
Last night I went to dinner in Tulsa at El Rancho Grande with some friends, a trip inspired by the restoration of their neon sign. It's almost finished, and looking good. It was still daylight when we left the restaurant, so I can't show you the full effect of the neon yet.Here's our little group: Brad (or half of him...oops!), Ron, LaSandra, Patty, and Rick. Good food, good friends, good conversation!

Finally.... Once, some time ago when I first started this blog, I thought to myself that if I ever got really desperate for something to photograph, I'd snap a picture of my breakfast. "Ha ha", I laughed to myself.

Today, I photographed my breakfast.