Sunday, June 7, 2015

Safely out of Texas & Oklahoma

We left Texas on Thursday after being in the state for about
eight weeks.  It was, at times challenging.  To recap, we had to replace the car's dead battery in Van Horn, and had to have the RV towed into Odessa for an oil change (had the oil changed on the car too.)  We spent two nights in Baird, TX, then went to Bay Landing......a nice park but the roads in the park are just terrible.  Right after we left there, they got hit by massive storms and had tornado damage all through Runaway Bay and Bridgeport.  We spent 16 days at Lake Whitney and had to hide out due to tornadoes while we were there.  By the way, the roads inside the park there were also terrible!  Then we went to Lake Tawakoni.  While looking for a site to settle into, Mary tried to turn around and got stuck in the mud.  After numerous attempts to get her van out of the mud, it just got worse, and the park ranger sent someone over with a truck to pull her out of the ruts that had been created.  It rained most of the time we were there, so we watched the areas around our sites flood before we left there to go to  Lake Texoma, on the Oklahoma border.  The roads in this park were a little bit better, but parts of the park was also under water!  Two days before leaving Lake Texoma, we went to Don's Dixie BBQ for some real Texas BBQ food.  It was a hoot.  The place was quaint, and charming.  The food was great, and the servings were good.  I took a few pictures there too.




We have been in FOUR Thousand Trails Parks in Texas.  None had good roads inside the parks, and all had suffered rain damage or worse.  I am sorry for them, but it was no picnic for us either.  We are very grateful that God watched over us and kept us safe through all of this.  When we left on Thursday we headed north into OK.  We drove over Lake Texoma, and saw how high the water level is, and the flooded areas along the highway.






We spent Thursday night at the Elks lodge in Edmond, OK.
We had water and 50 amp electric hookups!  When we went
inside to pay for the sites, and have a cool drink, we found the members to be VERY nice.  Mary was having a problem with her air conditioner, and a man there called someone he knew who came over and fixed her A/C that night.  I won't say we got drunk, but somehow Mary and I got to drinking shots of Hot Damn, and we got pretty silly before we left!  We will definitely put that lodge on our list of good places to visit!
Friday morning we got back on the road fairly early, but we soon lost that advantage because Mary blew a tire on her utility trailer............even tore off the fender that covered it!  She called her insurance, Progressive, and they got help to her in about 30 minutes.........way better service than we got from Auto Club.  We arrived at the Elks Lodge in El Dorado, Kansas around 4 pm.  They had told us they had two sites with electric hookups only.  It turned out to be only 20 amps, which Mary was ok with, but since we need at least 30 amps,  we had to run our generator all evening and in the morning.  After the day we had all been through, we decided to try a new (new to us) place called Blaum's for dinner.  They were very reasonably priced, and offered quite a nice variety from salads, to burgers to chicken or steak dinners........and wonderful premium ice cream for sundaes and banana splits.  Jim had a fudge brownie sundae  and I had butter pecan ice cream with hot caramel topping.  Mary had a grilled chicken salad and no dessert.  She's got won't power!
We got a call that afternoon from the place we were scheduled to go to in Topeka, Kansas for the next 3 days.  She said the road was closed due to flooding, and it was still raining and her sites were all with standing water in them.  We decided not to go there, so we looked on the internet for an alternative.  They sure can make an awful place look good by selective picture taking......LOL.  This park we are in is not a good one.  The spaces are too close together, and because of excessive rain the ground is saturated, and there are ruts filled with muddy water.  BUT they have 50 amp electric and cable TV.  To make things easier for Jim, we just hooked up the bedroom TV to the cable, and he didn't have to try to find a dry spot he could put our satellite dish out in to try to find a signal............which would not have been easy since there are many trees shading EVERY site.



Jim and the "kids" were happy to be here, and ready to relax for a while.
Since Mary needed to go to Wal-Mart, I picked up a pizza for an easy dinner last night.  We saw an ad on TV for a restaurant called Spangles that also sounds interesting.  There is one nearby, so we went there for lunch today.  It turned out to be a 50's style restaurant.

The food and prices were OK, but we've
definitely had better.  Still it was fun with a nice atmosphere.
 Well, time to close for now.  Keep the rubber side down.  Have a grand time, and enjoy America, the greatest country in the world.
  



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