Road Trip Wednesday: Research!

How perfectly timed is

today's RTW prompt

? Lee wants to know the weirdest thing you've ever researched for your writing. I didn't even arrange it this way-- she picked it by her very lonesome-- but it is a great chance for me to show you guys some of the weirdest stuff I saw on the research trip my husband and I took to the Wichita Mountains in southwest Oklahoma last week.

(This is me! Doing research! Also! It is hard to write in a notebook in 50 mph gusts!)

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Okay, so weird. Well, we visited Ft. Sill, which is where Geronimo ended up a captive. Reportedly, he was never kept in this guard house except when he had a little too much fun in town and needed to sleep it off. But this guy didn't fare so well. It's like Mumford & Sons goes to jail. Hipster incarceration.

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We also saw this mule gun. That's no typo. The sign said the designers neglected to account for the mule's reaction to having explosives on its back. Oh, to be on a fly on the wall for that one...

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In horrifying things, we headed outside the Refuge to

Cutthroat Gap

, only Cutthroat Gap is inside the restricted area of the Refuge, so we had to look from afar-- and there was a skinned wild hog hanging on the fence beside the historical marker. Equally alarming: Ft. Sill has one of the buckets from that massacre, but thankfully,  not the head found in it.

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Inside the Refuge, there is a strange area called

the Holy City

. It's used for passion plays, apparently. From the outside, it does look a little like Biblical Israel.

But on the inside?

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I know the money laying around is supposed to be donations, but why that one kid is holding a stuffed Simba, I have no idea. Meanwhile, a creepy disembodied voice recites Bible stories. The husband got a Waco vibe. Even Kermit was scared. So scared he got on his chariot and split.

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This prairie dog totally wanted to bite my toe.

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I am glad neither this elk nor this buffalo got a chance to step on my toe.

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We were also extremely glad this cloud went the opposite direction from our car.

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In possibly my bravest bit of research to date, we visited the Jesse James museum in Cement, Oklahoma. (That's pronounced "

SEE

-mint," for all you non-Okies.) The sign on the door had two numbers to call, which prompted this tweet:

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The guy who let us in was super nice, though. He was headed to Chickasha ("chick-a-shay," non-Okies), to help with

tornado cleanup

, so he just left us there and told us to close the door when we left. Small towns FTW. It wasn't the Smithsonian, but we read a lot of very interesting information about the James/Younger gang's exploits in the area.

Finally, two things to file under "badass." One: Marlow, OK has the world's coolest playground.

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And two: I wrote a scene set on Elk Mountain in the Refuge. Having never hiked that mountain, I was obviously just making it up, but when we did head to the top, what did I come across?

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My scene. In the flesh. Or in the flowers, as the case may be.

Have you done something crazy in the name of research? How did that work out for you?

Head over to YA Highway

and tell us about it!