Hi there, good to see you back. Our
last chapter concluded on Friday, May 19th, when we
arrived in Amarillo, Texas. Saturday we left the coach after lunch
and did a badly needed Walmart run. We also got one geocache because
it was in the Walmart parking lot. After shopping we went back to
the coach, put stuff away and then did a few chores. We spent the
rest of the day in the coach.
Sunday, May 21st, we got a
Sunday paper and had a relaxing morning. After lunch we went out to
do some geocaching. We were able to get 13 new finds, along with 3
DNFs, for the afternoon. In the midst of our caching we also did
some shopping at Kohls. About 5:30 we went to the World Famous Big
Texan restaurant for dinner. We have been to Amarillo on two other
occasions and gone to the Big Texan both times. Although we enjoyed
the last two trips, this one was a little disappointing. Jackie's
steak was not done to her liking as it was the last two times. The
service was awful, they even ran out of butter. The place if most
famous for it's “Free” 72 oz steak. Free if you eat it, along
with a baked potato and salad, in one hour. Today was the first time
we actually saw someone up on the platform trying the challenge. He
was a big guy, but when we left he had less than 30 minutes, was
about half way through the steak and hadn't touched the potato or
salad. He may have ended up paying the $80 or $90 tab they charge if
you fail. After dinner we drove back home and relaxed the rest of
the night.
Wednesday, May 24th, we left
the park after lunch and went out to do some geocaching. We had a
great afternoon, getting 18 new finds, and 2 DNFs. One of the finds
took us to another Amarillo public art display, along the lines of,
but not nearly as famous as, the Cadillac Ranch display along
Interstate 40. The work was called Ozymandias on the Plains and was
created by philanthropist, millionaire, and artist Stanley Marsh, who
is also responsible for Cadillac Ranch and several other odd public
art displays in the area. It is basically a pair of broken off feet
and lower legs, meant to invoke the image of a vandalized or
destroyed larger statue. Like the cars in Cadillac Ranch, it is
frequently “vandalized” with various colors of paint, although
the most prevalent painting issue for this work is that local
“painters” keep painting socks on the legs, which were intended
by the artist to be bare. After caching we stopped again at both
Sams Club and Kohls because we had some discount coupons that were
going to expire. We then went home and I made a batch of stuffed
green peppers for dinner. We stayed in the rest of the night.
Thursday, May 25th, we went
out about noon and had lunch at a local Mexican place not too far
from the old route 66 downtown area. It was at the edge of a barrio
and seemed pretty old school Mexican. We were the only non-Hispanics
in the place. The food was very tasty and quite authentic. We had a
great lunch, with good service. We are getting pretty good at
finding authentic old style true Mexican restaurants in towns we
visit. After lunch we headed out for some more geocaching, getting
13 finds in a few hours. It was pretty windy and getting hot, so we
quit about 3:30 and went back to the coach where we stayed in the
rest of the night.
Friday, May 26th, moving
day. Today we continued east, going 156 miles on Interstate 40 to
Elk City, Oklahoma. It was a pretty easy trip, with a stop for fuel
and lunch along the way. We arrived at the RV park about 2:30 and
got moved in for a four day stay. We will be here for the long
Memorial Day weekend. Elk City was hit by a tornado about a week and
a half ago. It tore through a neighborhood just a mile south of the
RV park, just the other side of the freeway. The weather looks
pretty good for our stay here, we have our fingers crossed. After we
got set up we just stayed in and relaxed for the remainder of the
day.
Saturday, May 27th, we awoke
to another beautiful morning. We left the coach after lunch and went
to the Walmart here in town. After we dropped the groceries back off
at the coach, we went out to do some geocaching in Elk City. Elk
City was founded in 1901 as a railroad town and was so named because
it was built at the head of Elk Creek. Today's population is a
little over 12,000. There were not a lot of caches in town, but we
were able to get eight new finds, along with one DNF, in a few hours.
The last cache of the day was another milestone for us, cache find
number 8,600. When we finished our caching we did some sightseeing,
including a brief visit to the area where the EF2 tornado went
through a week and a half ago. It was only a couple of miles south
of the RV park we are in. The tornado first touched down in a fairly
new country club neighborhood where it destroyed the clubhouse and
damaged or destroyed dozens of homes. It then wiped out a smaller,
older neighborhood across the road, along with several businesses.
The tornado hit just before 7:00 p.m., but there were only two
fatalities, one in the country club and one out a more rural area.
Although in our travels over the last 12 years we have seen isolated
instances of tornado damaged buildings, this was the first time that
we saw first hand an entire area of recent damage. Driving through
the neighborhood, we saw typical tornado effects, a house completely
leveled and the one across the street with minor roof damage. It was
very devastating to see.
We went back to the coach and relaxed
for an hour or so, and got cleaned up from caching. A little after
5:00 we left again and went to the Elk City Elks Lodge for cocktails
and dinner. The place was very busy because they had a wedding
reception being held there. However, the Lodge does have 540
members, which is pretty good for a small town like Elk City. We had
a couple of drinks and got our lodge pin, then we went to a table for
dinner. The Lodge has full menu dinners three nights a week. Jackie
had chicken livers and I had fried jumbo shrimp. Both of our meals
were excellent. The chicken livers were big, well cooked and very
tasty. They were way better than the place in Yuma where Jackie has
gotten chicken livers several times in the past, a place that is
“famous” for it's livers. This Elks puts that place to shame.
We had a great dinner, a nice visit and were back home by 7:30 where
we stayed in the rest of the evening.
Sunday, May 28th, I went out
and got the Sunday paper and we had a relaxing morning. After lunch
we went out for a day of caching. It was a nice, clear day with
temps expected in the low 80's, just a nice day. Since we had done
all of the caches in Elk City yesterday we had to go out in the rural
areas today. We ended up making a big circle, going about 30 miles
south and then 20 miles east, catching caches along the way. Many of
them were cemetery caches, so we visited a number of small, community
cemeteries. Because it was Memorial Day weekend we found a lot of
people visiting in the cemeteries. Among our cache finds today were a couple near a small town called Burns Flat. It turned out that they were on the site of an old military base with quite a history. In the early days of WW-II the Navy bought up a bunch of farm land 15 miles south of Clinton, Oklahoma and built Clinton Naval Air Station as a training base for Navy pilots. After the war the base was closed and turned over to civilian authorities. In the early 1950's the government came back, re-aquired the rights to the property and opened Clinton-Sherman Air Force Base. The property was greatly expanded, including improving the runways to be very wide and 13,500 feet long, over two and a half miles. The base became a SAC base with several squadrons of nuclear armed B-52 bombers as well as their aerial refueling squadrons operating out of it. The base was again closed in 1969 and returned to civilian control. Because of the long runway, one of the longest and widest in the country, the Oklahoma authorities have been promoting it as a “Spacebase”, a location for the horizontal launching and recovery of space vehicles. So far that effort hasn't accomplished much more than some buzz and a few signs, and the air field is mostly just used for local companies as a regional airport. Most of the hangers are still up and being used, as well as the control tower and a few other buildings. The military barracks are gone, but the old base housing area has been turned into a neighborhood of mostly well maintained private homes. We had a good afternoon of caching, getting 14 new finds and one DNF. After caching we went back to the coach and relaxed for the rest of the day.
Monday, May 29th, Memorial
Day. We decided we needed a day off, so we just stayed in the coach
for the day, except for a quick trip in the afternoon to Walmart for
some coleslaw to go with the BBQ pork we are making in the crock pot
tomorrow. We did a few little chores, watched a movie on TV and just
enjoyed the day. Tuesday was another travel day. It was an easy 105
mile trip to Oklahoma City. We left Elk City about 10:30 and got
into the Rockwell RV park in southwest OKC about 12:15. We were
quickly parked and set up for our five day stay here in the capitol
city.
Since we got here early we decided to
go out and just do a little exploring in the afternoon. We spent a
couple of hours doing a driving tour of the state capitol campus, the
downtown area and the business area near where the RV park is. We
did stop to get one geocache near the state capitol, in one of the
little parks. A very pretty capitol building with oil wells in
several locations around the building, includingone very large oil derrick right in front of the front steps. This is the only state capitol with active oil wells on the campus. It seems they built it right over a large sandstone oil deposit. After driving around for a while we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night. We enjoyed our yummy pulled pork for dinner.
Wednesday, May 31st, we left
the coach after lunch and went out for a day of adventure. We spent
most of the afternoon geocaching, getting 24 new finds, and two DNFs,
mostly in the southwestern part of town, not too far from where we
are parked. About 4:30 we drove up to the northeastern part of the
metro area to the town of Edmond, Oklahoma and visited the Elks Lodge
there. Edmond is a bedroom community of OKC, and is also the home to
Central Oklahoma University, one of Oklahoma's public universities.
The lodge was in a very pretty rural area and was quite large. It
was also one of the friendliest lodges we have visited in a long
time. Although the lodge only has a little over 100 members, they
were very busy and everyone who came in came over and said hi and
talked to us. We had a couple of drinks and got a lodge pin, stayed
for an hour or so and then left to go visit the Oklahoma City Lodge,
which is the “mother lodge” of Oklahoma, the first Elks lodge in
the state. The last time we were in Oklahoma City was back in 2006
and when we visited the OKC lodge they were in an older building near
downtown. About four years ago they sold that building and land and
built a new place in the southwestern part of town, only about eight
miles from where the coach is parked. There were only a handful of
people in this lodge, but the bar manager was a past Exalted Ruler
and very friendly so she sat and talked to us until we left after
about 45 minutes. Their new building was very nice, but they too
only have about 150 members and are struggling. We got a new lodge
pin before leaving. We stopped at a nearby Applebee's for a quick,
late dinner, then headed back to the coach. We didn't get home until
about 8:30 after a very busy and enjoyable day.
Thursday, June 1st, a new
month begins. We left the coach after lunch and went to get Jackie a
haircut. After the haircut we did four geocaches that were close by
and then stopped at Home Depot for some plexiglass. I am going to
try and make a shield for the counter, next to the stove, to keep our
old cat Smokey off of the counter and sink area. In his old age,
pretty much blind and deaf, he has gotten into the habit of going up
on the counter every chance he gets. We don't like his constant
visits, so we hope that a splash guard will block his path from the
couch. After Home Depot we went back to the coach and spent the rest
of the afternoon there. We did a few chores and watched a movie on
TV. Mid afternoon we had some storm clouds move through, got a lot
of wind for about a half hour, but no rain. It is supposed to be
this way for the next few days.
Friday, June 2nd, the
weather was still very iffy. We did our exercise walk in the morning
and after lunch we did a quick Walmart run. Other than that, it was
a stay at home day. Did a few chores and watched a movie on TV. We
did get about two hours of pretty good rain in the mid afternoon, but
it cleared up after that. Saturday was more of the same weatherwise.
About noon we went to a nearby restaurant called Trappers for lunch
with some RVing friends. A few days ago Jackie found out that Bob
and Diana Beatty were going to be in Oklahoma City fo
r a couple of the days we were here. Their coach was actually parked at an RV park a mile west of where we are, but they had gone off on a three week car trip back east. They were going to be back on Thursday, so we made arrangements to have lunch on Saturday, our last day here in OKC. We met Bob and Diana several years ago at a rally and have had contact with them on and off since.
r a couple of the days we were here. Their coach was actually parked at an RV park a mile west of where we are, but they had gone off on a three week car trip back east. They were going to be back on Thursday, so we made arrangements to have lunch on Saturday, our last day here in OKC. We met Bob and Diana several years ago at a rally and have had contact with them on and off since.
Trappers is a Louisiana themed fish
restaurant with a very interesting decor and menu. Very “old
bayou” kind of place. The food was quite good, although Jackie
said her salmon was a little overdone. I had seared peppered ahi and
it was wonderful. We also had an alligator appetizer, half fried and
half blackened and grilled, and it was quite good too. We had a two
hour lunch and really enjoyed visiting with Bob and Diana. We had
last seen them in Chandler in March at the FMCA rally, but we didn't
get to spend any time with them there. After lunch we ran some
errands. One was to take the plexiglass I bought back to home depot
since I got up this morning and Smokey was on the counter despite the
plexiglass blocking the way from the couch. Not sure if he jumped up
from the floor, or figured out a way around it, but I didn't see the
need to go through all the trouble of trimming and securing a shield
that wasn't going to do what we wanted it to do. We also drove
around in the on and off rain doing a little more sight-seeing in
OKC. About 4:00 we were back in the coach for the rest of the night.
Sunday, June 4th, the 12th
anniversary of our full timing adventure. June 4th, 2005
was when we closed on the house in Indio and bought our coach. Yea
us, still going strong and loving the life. Today was moving day,
despite the fact that the weather was going to stick around for one
more day. We got out about 10:00 and started north and east on
Interstate 44, heading for the northeast corner of Oklahoma and a
resort on the Grand Lake of the Cherokee, near Grove, Oklahoma.
Grand lake is a 43,000 acre lake formed by the building of Pensacola
dam on the Grand River in 1935. We arrived at the Eagle's Landing
Resort, which is right on the north shore of the lake, about 2:00,
after driving through on and off rain the whole 200 miles from OKC.
We got checked in and the basics set up in the rain and then just
relaxed the remainder of the day. Our arrival here for a week long
stay marks a good place to close this chapter and get it published.
Until next time, remember that age is a very high price to pay for
maturity. See ya soon.
