Leaving Okie and Meeting With Friends Again

Leaving Norman on a Saturday morning the skies were overcast but the temperature and traffic were mild.

There are plenty of well-known folks who hail from Oklahoma.  Among them: country musician Garth Brooks.  Driving through Oklahoma City's outskirts we passed this sign...

As we continued onto I-40 we found ourselves driving along the route of the Chisholm Trail. 

Mid-day we stopped in to look around at an Indian Trading Post (really just a gift shop) where I found two T-shirts I couldn't live without. One has Oklahoma on the front; the other, Route 66.  No doubt you'll see them in later posts. Incidentally, since leaving Oklahoma City, we are traveling along Route 66 and trying to learn more about it's history and the landmarks along it.

A really big sign at the trading post.

Some of the really nice vehicles parked at the trading post.

Is this an oil derrick? Did I spell that right? 

I love seeing the super sized wind turbines. They're never as good in a photograph as in real life.

The countryside along I-40 in western Oklahoma.

These round hay bales shimmered like gold in the sunshine.

I wish I could say we stopped at the National Route 66 Museum, but we didn't. 
I have to work on Wayne about this.

The soil is bright red here and the land is "wide open" .... We're about to leave Oklahoma and go into Texas.

Thank you. We're glad to be here.

Me thinks it's gonna fall over.

It was still dry, warm and sunny when we stopped at a Texas Welcome Center which was some 100 miles into the state along I-40. We ate dinner, walked the dogs and found the dry hot wind to be a formidable foe. This is where I checked our email and found a message from my friend Marcella. She and Landon are heading east from Albuquerque toward home in Ohio. Whoa! We're on a collision course!  This is great!  Meeting up with friends as we travel is always fun and we've been looking forward to seeing Marcella and Landon again ever since we parted in Utah last September.

Through a few emails, we determined we'd rendezvous in Amarillo where Wayne and I will arrive first and find a suitable campground.  Landon and Marcella arrived the next afternoon! 

Psycho.  No shower for me, thank you. I saw what happened when Janet Leigh took a shower at Bates Motel.

I guess as a take-off of the Cadillac Ranch, we came upon this oddity at an Amarillo campground.
It's an old motorhome stuck, nose-down, into the ground.

Mid-afternoon, the blast of Landon's Hadleys as they came into the campground was music to my ears! 

Marcella

Landon, walking BJ, the wonder Beagle

Feeding our faces and our spirits!

Darn camera.

Goodnight.

We've decided to visit Palo Duro Canyon tomorrow. Excursions are always fun!

The University of Oklahoma at Norman

Norman, Oklahoma is home to the University of Oklahoma (OU) and I'd never been there although Wayne had been a few times for banking school.  We're staying in the Clear Lake Campground in Thunderbird Lake State Park a few miles out of town.

Our drive into Norman was uneventful and the weather was very near perfect. The OU campus is beautiful with so many nice old buildings.  I won't attempt to remember all the building names, I'll just give a photo overview instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was the last picture I snapped around campus. From here we were riding along when I heard Lexie whimper in the back seat.  For the second time in a little more than two days, I turned around to find her in what appeared to be a seizure. Wayne quickly found a place to pull over and we gathered her in our arms to comfort her. We managed to find a vet who could see her right away but they could determine nothing. Bloodwork was done but it was normal.  We'll watch her closely and, if the seizures continue or worsen, we'll have to have a more indepth research done.  She seems fine now.

It was late in the afternoon when we finished at the vet's office and we made our way back to Thunderbird Lake State Park.

 

A dead snake we passed along the road to the campground. 

These "horse statues" are everywhere around here. 
Must have been a traveling salesman...

Friday night the campground at Thunderbird Lake filled completely with families.  Bicycles, dogs, boats, campfires and the happy sound of weekend camping was everywhere. 

Saturday morning we pulled out to move on through Oklahoma City and then back into Texas heading west.



Along The Road From Denton, Texas to Norman, Oklahoma

In the end, it took nine days to replace and then install the shattered window so we finally left Denton, Texas and went looking for cooler temperatures.  It's already reaching into the 80's nearly everyday.

One of the things I did to occupy my time in Denton was play around with pictures in Picasa and Picnik. The purist in me gave way to a bit of daring and I promised I'd do some fun things with some of the pictures I take and then post on the blog.  Here's some of what I've been doing.

This Denton water tower is along I-35 north.
I "neonized" it!  But nothing too dramatic.

Wayne did some system maintenance checks on Endie while we waited around in Denton and found the batteries were very nearly dry.  This isn't a good thing to find on a brand new coach and he was a bit angry at the prospect of damaging to the pricey replacement. To add water, he had to disconnect the house batteries and  then found the solar panel inoperable.

On our way out of town we passed I-35 RV Center and decided it would be worthwhile to make the U-turn to ask Craig and Johnny Stack to take a look. Johnny came to the campground last week to replace the tan window awning that was mistakenly put on the curb side with the new black one sent to us from Tyson at The RV Shop in Baton Rouge.  We were real happy with the work Johnny did and sure enough, he fixed the wiring problem quickly and we were back on the road quickly.

This is an enormous facility along I-35 going north. I guess they make those giant wind turbines we've seen. Those are individual wings lined up along the left side and those housings are on the right. A terrific site!



This is one of those huge wind turbine wings ready to travel!
Gives a good perspective of the size!

I've decided to put some captions directly on the pictures occasionally. 
We crossed the famous Texas Red River and you know... it is red.

We stopped in at the Oklahoma Welcome Center on I-35 to get a travel guide.  I had to take this photo of Ozzie taking his position on Wayne's arm. He gets into this position every time and just begs to have his picture snapped!

Sign at the Oklahoma Welcome Center. Nice

I was pretty far away when I took this this picture. I had to zoom and crop so it's a little fuzzy.
Anyway, it's our rig parked at the Oklahoma Welcome Center.

We only got as far as Ardmore, Oklahoma that day. We drove the few short miles east to Elephant Rock Campground at Lake Murray State Park.  Just one night though and we're off again. The temperatures and humidity are so uncomfortable to us we've just got to get into some cooler weather.

Next day, Lady GaGa found a Walmart at the Pauls Valley, Oklahoma exit and to our surprise, we saw a Braum's Ice Cream Store too!  Hamburgers, fries, shakes and two waffle cones later, we returned to the coach to find almost our entire supply of paper napkins shredded all over the sofa and in the dog beds. For a good long time Ozzie has been shredding paper when we leave them alone. This day, he walked along the counter from the window sill to the table where he simply gathered the napkins directly from the dispenser! 

My dear sweet, one-in-a-million husband never looses his cool with me, Lexie or Ozzie.  He simply said, "who did this?" Of course, the Oz-Man was already hiding under the table by this time. 

By early afternoon we reached our Norman, Oklahoma destination, Turkey Bay at Lake Thunderbird State Park . It's about 13 miles east of I-35.  The campground has paved interior roads, plenty of trees, concrete pads and lots of empty spaces from which to choose (first come, first serve).  We didn't disconnect the car and found ourselves in one of those tiny circular dead ends with the car at an angle that wouldn't allow disconnect.  The situation quickly deteriorated to the point of requiring Wayne at the wheel of the coach, me at the wheel of the car (still attached) and a good Samaritan coaching us out of the sticky situation.  We were exhausted in the end and appreciated the Camp Host's offer let us park in one of the nice wide handicapped spaces.  Turns out we would have found ourselves in this situation sooner or later as the campground has several of these tight turns. We've been given permission to retreat from the campground going the wrong way on a one-way road. 

To add insult to injury, the grounds are covered with tiny burrs that bury themselves in the dogs' paws. They are round and spiky and get twisted all around their hairs.  Uck.  We'll spend one day around the OU campus and then we're outta here!