Oklahoma!

So, since our live version of “The Extreme Weather Show” never ends, on we go from Santa Fe, New Mexico. We took a leisurely drive into Amarillo, Texas and found the Amarillo Ranch RV Park. It was a nice park, has an indoor pool and spa, and very large pull through sites. We got there with temps in the 90’s, but the following day the winds picked up and the temps cooled way down.  The forecast for the 3rd day called for freezing, so we decided that was enough for Amarillo. Upon packing up to leave, the icy winds raged and kicked up a huge dust storm as we headed out E/B Hwy. 40. It took about 2 hours driving to get us out of the dust and winds.  We continued on into Hinton, OK, where we found the Red Rock Canyon State Park. This was a pretty cool park hidden among some spectacular canyons of red rock right in the middle of the immense flatness that is central Oklahoma. We pulled in with nice, sunny weather and found the park nearly empty.  Found us a spot at the very back of the park, next to bathrooms and showers, then watched as the weather turned progressively worse as the night unfolded. Again, icy, RAGING winds tried to blow our trailer off the face of the Earth, and icy rain dumped on us in the night and into the next morning.

Home in Red Rock Canyon. Lots of socializing here...NOT!

Fishin' pond under the cliffs.

They encourage rappelling at Red Rock Canyon State Park. Here is one typical rappelling face.

The drive into the canyon...

The weather the next day was TERRIBLE still! The forecast called for snow, but all we got was 60 MPH winds and temps in the 30’s, with occasional rain flurries. So much for trying to hike around the park. 

A couple days of that and off we went to Lake Thunderbird State Park in Norman (OKC) Oklahoma. This park is split on opposite sides of the Lake and we randomly picked the Indian Point side.  They had some lakeview full hookups, a bit pricy at $28/day ($27 with Good Sam discount). The lake was nasty looking reddish/brown water (the dirt around it was of the bright red variety). One of the locals camping near us said they referred to it as Lake Dirty Bird.

Lakeview at Lake "Dirty Bird", as the locals refer to it...

Lake Thunderbird

We went into OKC and visited the Oklahoma City Memorial Museum and Park, a very somber experience. Then we went downtown and walked around the area called “Bricktown”. 

This is the Survivors Tree at the Oklahoma City Museum and Memorial. This tree stood in the middle of the parking lot across the street from the front of what was the Murrah building. The explosion demolished most if not all of the cars parked in that lot, but this tree withstood the power of the blast.

The weather stayed pretty blah and cold while we were at Lake Thunderbird. We did manage to take a short drive to the other side of the lake and check out the Clear Bay camping areas. If I had my “druthers” I would have probably preferred to stay there.  The RV sites looked like they had water and electric, most if not all were large concrete pads and spacious sites, and they went for $25/night (or probably $24 with Good Sam). There was a dump station at the front area of the driveway.  Clear Bay had a lakeside cafe, horse stables with horse riding opportunities, a nature center, and boat launch.

Terrible weather that we were still in, we headed into Tulsa where we had to have some minor repairs done to the trailer and a Keystone authorized repair place there was the only one I could find along our path that had an appointment available within a reasonable time frame.  More on that next time...