Oklahoma – TooBusyForWork

Eclipse then home

We woke to a cloudy morning on 8 April. It didn’t look promising for viewing. Kevin kept watching the cloud cover on weather apps, and just before totality we quickly drove 20 miles northwest. We got amazingly lucky, and the clouds parted just enough to view totality! There were still some high thin clouds, but we could see the “Diamond ring” and then the darkness fell. All the birds stopped singing, and even the insects stopped their sounds. Very odd, but just like what we observed during the 2017 eclipse in Idaho. Soon it was over, and we got absolutely no good pictures! We were rushing so much to get to a clear spot we had no time to set up gear. Oh well I have memories.

We spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night at the RV park in so-so weather. We spent Thursday, 11 April at the Walmart in Abilene. Nice spot for an overnight parking location. We spent Friday at Mustang RV Park in Oklahoma, leaving very early after deciding to make a run for home because of a bad storm coming in. We made it to the KOA in Topeka, KS on Saturday, then home on Sunday. We put the motorhome at our local county park, open but without water. We were too tired to unpack, so we just slept there that night. Monday and Tuesday were unpacking – ugh. It always seems a lot more trouble to unpack than to pack. But we are now home, and the cats adjusted quickly. I think they like the extra space for their zoomies. They run from the bedroom through the living room and down the stairs multiple times a day.

April and May are our medical appointment times, and we are both pretty busy with our respective dentists and doctors. Kevin is getting his dental implant finished, and I have appointments with a dermatologist, ophthalmologist, and the pain medicine guy. I need a dentist appointment too. The pain med will require at least two follow up appointments, and the derm probably will too. Sigh.

My poor 830 Record sewing machine had to go to its doctor on Saturday too. I got a thread sound up at the stand and broke the needle. I can’t get it to do any free motion quilting since, and it broke 5 needles when I kept trying various repairs I knew about. It sews ok on straight stitching, but there is thread wadding up on the bottom when I do FMQ. Hopefully I just pulled something out of whack and the machine can easily (and inexpensively) come back from it. I will find out in a week or so. The RZR is in for some major preventative service too since we really don’t know how it was cared for before we got it. We have out a few thousand miles on it! We had a regular oil change done when needed, but this is a more extensive service. We find out that dollar amount next week too, depending on whether they fine anything serious. We don’t think so, but …

I won’t be posting much, normal for me when I am home. Staying in one place just isn’t as interesting as traveling. We do have one short trip planned with my son in law and his two children the week after Memorial Day. Then we will be leaving for our western summer in mid-June.

Off for snowbird trip 2023/24

We had a fabulous Christmas hanging with the kids and grandkids. Kevin got his 3D printer going and made some fabulous decorations. I apologize for the remnant threads; I got too excited to notice them.

The pattern describes it as a snow globe

We didn’t put up the big tree, but Kevin made sure we had our presents under a lot of trees. Most of these were actually experiments with his new printer he got (early) for Christmas. It is a newer Ender 3 that goes with us in the motorhome.

We actually left the house on Boxing Day just after noon. Since we weren’t having folks over to our house for the holidays, we had more time to pack and sort. One of the advantages of having a son and DIL nearby with a big house who likes to cook is they host at least one of the big holidays. This year they chose Christmas. We ended up spending the first night in the Lakeside Casino RV park. It is only a bit over 3 hours from home so we got in early enough to put water in the tanks. And guess what we woke up to the next morning?

Yup, 2” of wet heavy snow. It didn’t get any better later in the morning. We just waited for the highway to be clear and Kevin pushed the snow off the big slide toppers. The other slides are much smaller and came in without issue. Since we left so late we on,y made it to Emporia, KS where we stayed in a Walmart parking lot. The next day (Thursday) we made it to Texola, OK right on the Texas line. It is a small and very quiet campground, and we have stayed there a few times before. All through Missouri, Kansas, and most of Oklahoma we went through small snow squalls. They were never very heavy and they never lasted long. It was tedious though. I was thrilled when we made it to Amarillo and the sun came out. New Mexico was even more clear, and we are spending tonight in the American RV Park on the west side of Albuquerque. Tomorrow we hope to boondock outside Williams, AZ, and then make it to Quartzsite, AZ by Sunday. We plan on staying there for quite a bit of the winter.

I haven’t shown many pictures of my adorable cats recently, so here you go! They are sisters, but they don’t often snuggle up like this. Minnie, the tabby, was snuggled in the blanket, and Luna, the black one, just squished herself in.

On the way west

We are finally in Arizona. As I noted in the last post, we spent Sunday night at a Walmart in Arkansas, then Monday night in the parking lot of the Grand Casino in McLoud, OK (near Shawnee, OK). We were able to have dinner with my sister and nephew in Oklahoma City which was nice. We saw high winds and red flag warnings were getting posted, so we left a few minutes before 7:00 am to try to make it to Amarillo, TX before the storm got bad. We barely made it. The last 30 miles or so were pretty white knuckled driving, but we got to our reserved spot at the Big Texan Ranch RV Park. We ended up leaving all but one of the slides pulled in. The winds were steady at 30+, and the gusts were 60-65+. Definitely not the time to leave the slides out. For anyone not familiar with the big slides on a big motorhome, they all have some type of vinyl covering over the top of the slide. Ours are made out of Sunbrella, and they fit pretty snuggly. But the noise they make when they start flapping in heavy winds can drive you crazy, so we bring them in. It isn’t a safety thing.

The wind warning went through Wednesday night, so we decided to just stay put in Amarillo for two nights. We went to Palo Duro State Park, just a short distance from Amarillo. Kevin and I had taken Alan and Mark here the first year we owned a pop up camper. Mark was a toddler, and Alan was 5 or 6. We hadn’t been back since, so it was time. It was cold and the wind whipped right through us, so we definitely just drove through the park. Pretty nice scenery though.

From the visitor center looking into the sun and wind.

This is lush compared to the surrounding land

They had “glamping” available for $75/night

We made it to the Seligman, AZ KOA for tonight. Both days were more driving than I like, but there is snow coming in behind us in Flagstaff. This KOA must have gotten drenching rains recently, probably leftovers from the California deluges. There are puddles everywhere. But we are able to finish up laundry, fill up propane, take on fresh water and dump gray water, and generally get ready to dry camp for the next few weeks,

And just a hint of how lovely Arizona sunsets can be. No editing; these really were the colors.

On the road again

I said last time I have been in a blogging funk, so nothing has been written. I have been slowly recovering from my shoulder surgery, but it has been slow. I think the soreness is one of the reasons I haven’t been doing as much. We have been doing a few things though! We had Thanksgiving dinner with three of our kids and all six of the grandkids, something that hasn’t happened before! We went a bit non-traditional with a smoked turkey and sous vide sirloin. It was a much more relaxing approach, and I think I will repeat it in the future. We also had Christmas with all four kids, spouses, a girlfriend, and five of the grandkids. Even nicer was the meal was mostly made by my oldest son and his wife, both great cooks. It is time to start transferring host duties.

I have also been in a quilting funk. I have only finished one quilt for my daughter. I was lucky to get time with each of the older two granddaughters, 12, to do some sewing. They each got to pick out fabric for a pillowcase, and then they sewed it by themselves. They were appropriately pretty proud of themselves.

We couldn’t leave right after Christmas because I needed to get a laser treatment on my eye. Nothing critical, just clearing out some film behind the cataract lens. Then we had snow and ice, so we didn’t leave until 30 December. We made it only to Lakeside Casino Campground in Osceola, IA to get the rig dewinterized and filled up with water. The campground has definitely had better days, but it is open all year and in a convenient location for getting things set for the trip.

Bad weather was dogging us, so instead of the two days we planned on to Oklahoma City, we pushed through the 500+ miles in one day. We decided we would much rather be stuck two or three days there rather than somewhere along the road. Good thing because we made it just before very cold weather with sleet and ice! And guess what else we found wrong with the rig? The thermostatically controlled outlet for the wet bay stopped working, and we didn’t have good luck with temps going to mid single digits. Kevin tried some other options like an incandescent trouble light and a heating pad, but we had frozen water by the morning of 2 January. Sigh. I looked at Kevin and said “I want to go south!” So we did. We chose to leave OKC and headed to Abilene, TX. By noon we had water again, and by 3:00 or so we were set up at the KOA. Nice place. While we aren’t far off I-20, I don’t hear the traffic.

We decided to stay 2 nights in Abilene to throughly warm ourselves up. Today we went to the Frontier Texas Museum, and it was fabulous! It has multi-media interpretive displays showing the viewpoints and experiences of the natives and the Anglos. Lots of fascinating immersive exhibits, and I highly, highly recommend it. I also got a bunch of equilateral triangles cut with my Accuquilt for use as what I call “mindless sewing”, an easy way to sew while traveling. I also have a 4” Drunkard’s Path die along with a bunch of fat quarters of fabric to cut. I will use the scraps from that to make more triangles later. The DP definitely isn’t mindless, but I do really like the design. Hopefully I can get two lap quilts done by the time we get to the FMCA rally at the end of the March. They always collect quilts for a local charity in the area of the rally.

Tomorrow we are heading farther down the road, but only 200 miles so we stop ahead of some heavy winds. I promise to post more!

End of 49ers Encampment and heading home

Warning – another picture heavy post!

We finally got all the work done on the Jeep, and it was expensive. Just part of the joy of MH ownership, and we have been pretty lucky until now. There has been so much travel to Las Vegas that we really didn’t want to do a lot more travel. That is the excuse I am going to give for not hitting the big tourist spots in Death Valley this time. We didn’t even do any of the 4WD trips! We did get to some of the historical presentations, all the music acts, and some other presentations.

We also took time to buy a Blackstone grill while in Las Vegas. Kevin has been looking at them, and the Camping World there had one at last year’s price, a significant savings. So far we are enjoying it. Kevin has made hamburgers, fajitas, and grilled potatoes. It is a bit of a pain to clean, but that should get better as the seasoning improves. Kevin installed a propane tap to the MH so it is easy to attach an external device to the MH’s propane tank instead of having to use a separate propane bottle – handy.

We headed into Beatty, NV one day to go to their famous candy store. And of course we bought a bunch of nuts and candy. They have some things hard to find anywhere else. Right at the edge of Beatty we found two of the famous donkeys. They are a standard sight here, and very popular with tourists. They are truly a dreadful thing in the wild though, displacing the native big horn sleep.

Heading back to the campground, I took some pictures of Death Valley at sunset.

Near the bottom of Sunrise Pass looking south

There really is no way of showing the vastness of the park. The picture above shows probably 30 miles.

From the Texas Springs Road showing the salt pan to the north

Looking from Texas Springs Road above Sunset Campground, NPS Visitor Center foreground right.

The huge alluvial fans coming from the mountains are amazing, this one shown above is probably 5-7 miles wide. They are a very distinctive feature of the park, and they show up everywhere.

With all the beauty around us, you don’t generally stay at the campground to “camp”. It is more a place to rejuvenate, eat, and sleep. That’s good because the campground is basically a big gravel parking lot. It is cheap though – $7.00 a night with our senior pass. There are flush toilets (no showers) plus a dump station with fresh water. This year there weren’t nearly as many people attending. They didn’t even open the first overflow camp area until Thursday, and normally they have all three overflows open and occupied by Monday or Tuesday.

Another thing about the Furnace Creek area is the legendary fuel prices, generally the most expensive in the country.

Also in the park (but regulated by NPS contract), the price for regular gasoline is $4.86 at Stovepipe Wells. Outside the park in Nevada at the casino, the price was $3.88. It is well worth the time to drive the 35 miles to Nevada! The Furnace Creek prices are the best advertisement I know of against unbridled capitalist greed. Stovepipe Wells is just as far from distribution sources, and they charge more than $2 per gallon less.

One thing nice about Nevada and California is they allow both medical and recreational sale of cannabis. I was able to refill the gummies I use to manage the residual pain in my shoulder for a much better price than I can going to Illinois at home. Using them I have been able to stop the ibuprofen that I have been on since surgery, giving my belly a much wanted relief. I take 10 mg each night, and I also take CBD gummies to reduce inflammation. The combination has really helped. I have to use the gummies because there is absolutely no way I am smoking anything!

Getting back to the Encampment, the biggest event is always when the wagon train comes in. This year they had 14 wagons travel the 100 miles from the far southern edge of the park to Furnace Creek. I will just post the pictures without captions because they are pretty self-explanatory. They are lead in by the Marine mounted color guard from 29 Palms. Each of the color guards trains their own horse, chosen from mustangs sold by the BLM. Impressive!

We left Death Valley on Sunday. We spent Sunday night at the Seligman, AZ KOA. Monday we stayed at Lavaland RV Park in Grants (nice brewery associated with it), Tuesday and Wednesday we were at the Tucumcari KOA waiting out a wind storm, and tonight we are at Mustang Run RV Park on the west side of Oklahoma City. We will spend Friday night at a Boondockers Welcome site near Kansas City, then home!

Oklahoma and into Texas and New Mexico

We spent the last day, 9 June, at Canton Lake in Oklahoma driving to Boiling Springs State Park. The park doesn’t have hot springs like the name implies, but it has bubbly natural springs that have been an attraction for thousands of years. The park is small, and it was really, really hot, so we mostly just drove through, stopping at some of the sights. The park facilities were mostly built by the CCC in the 1930s. The big pool and wading pool have had updates since them, but the buildings are still mostly CCC work. The National Park Service did the architectural work, and it is pretty obvious.

A church group was enjoying the big conference center, also built by the CCC

A wonderful old water tower built by CCC

We left Canton for our first Boondocker’s Welcome stay on 10 June. We stayed at a working ranch just barely into Texas off I-40. BW is a subscription service for overnight stays offered by volunteer hosts. There is a $50/year charge for the service, but no charge for the location unless there are other amenities offered. In our case, we got a halfway level site with a gravel base, 50 amp service (!), and nice views for no cost. The hosts get “paid” with a membership in BW themselves. The electrical service was nice because it was still hotter than hell! We could have used our generator of course, but the lack of noise was nice. I gave them a thank you gift – two bowl cozies made with a great camper fabric with a red background. It turned out the wife of the couple was also a member of the FB group RV Quilters, just like me. We had a nice chat.

The forecast was for significant wind on 11 June, so we left our BW site by 7:15 to get as much driving as possible in before the winds got extra bad. It was over 300 miles to Raton, our next spot, and some of it was white knuckle driving. I can handle 20-25mph steady winds without issue, and up to 30-35 in a pinch, but we eventually got winds so gusty we had to pull off the road for a couple of hours. It was NOT a fun drive, but we eventually made it.

The Raton KOA is the lowest level of KOA, a Journey. This category is for locations oriented towards those passing through, not those looking for many amenities. They gave us a tight 30 amp back-in site with nice trees for shade, but we had to position the rig very carefully to fit; it was not designed for a 40’, 4 slide motorhome! We made it, but there was no option to open the awning! Luckily the trees were quite nice, and I sat in the shade for a few hours each day. This KPA has pull-through and 50 amp sites available, but those are held for the overnighters. It was rather amazing watching the park transition from mostly empty to completely full in 3 hours each day. Every morning the first folks started leaving around 6:00 am (yes, I wake up ridiculously early!), and the park was empty again by 10:00.

Since the drive in was so tough, we ate dinner at the Colefax Ale Cellar, a brewery with good sandwiches and better beer. We ended up buying some of their great dark beer to take with us. It is hard being a stout and ale drinker in a world of IPAs, but they had some good ones.

We got around the next day to drive to a long loop to Cimaron, Eagle Next, Red River, and Taos. It was a great trip! I always stop and read all the historic markers, and we accidentally found one about the town of Dawson, an old Phelps-Dodge mining town. What a serendipitous find! The drive in was lovely. The community was a classic company town with a population of 6,000. When the mines closed in 1950, some parts went to other company towns but most was just razed and the debris removed.

The community was infamous for two horrific mine explosions, one in 1913 and another in 1923 with a total of 383 miners killed. The company provided the metal crosses since so many were immigrants away from their families. Some families added traditional markers later. The cemetery is maintained by an old settlers group, and they have big gatherings every 2 years.

The old cemetery was well kept and poignant

I have really bad internet here, so I will leave the rest of our trip for another post.

Gilcrease Museum

Today’s visit was to Tulsa, OK and the Gilcrease Museum. Thomas Gilcrease was an enrolled member of the Creek nation who became one of the numerous oil magnates in eastern Oklahoma when oil was discovered on his family land. He was fabulously rich, but his passion was for the history of the Americas. He collected hundreds of thousands of items, buying entire collections when he could. There were paintings, sculptures, pottery, textiles, and an incredibly valuable collection of paper and books. He was in debt in 1954 and offered the entire collection to the city of Tulsa for a greatly reduced price of $2.5M, promising to pay even that back in the future. The museum is managed jointly by the University of Tulsa and the city of Tulsa. There are now over 500,000 items in the collection making it the largest collection of material regarding the Americas in the world.

When I was a child, I came to the museum. I remember most the wonderful impressionist paintings. At that time they had the material organized by type of artifact, so the paintings were all together. Now the museum is organized by what part of the Americas the material came from, a more helpful view IMHO. I will show a tiny bit of the wonderful items.

I said earlier how much I like Impressionists. This is a piece by Kevin Connywerdy (Kiowa/Comanche) called Touched by the Spiritt

This was one of my favorite modern paintings

Then there was this one by a Portuguese Hawaiian, Harry Fonseca) of a Hopi subject, Three Coyote Koshare. What a great take on the legend!

This is the first painting in the gallery of Native American ethnography – a modern view

Then there are the landscape. Blow this one to the largest size you can to see the beautiful rendition of a prairie scene.

One of the Native American impressionists

Traditional paintings are also in the collection.

Very traditional painting of a Crow encampment

Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the ruling the agreed the Cherokees were an independent nation whose treaty rights should be respected. Andrew Jackson forced the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears where thousands died. It was painted by the nephew of the famous founder of Methodism, John Wesley, who raised him.

Chief Justice John Marshall by John Wesley Jarvis

I live in Black Hawk County in Iowa, named in honor of this Sac and Fox chief.

Chief Black Hawk and his son whirling Thunder, also by John Wesley Jarvis

Classic American landscape artists are well represented like this one from John Singer Sargent.

But my favorite of the landscapes had to be this study of the Grand Canyon. The photo I took of the attribution is too blurry for me to make it out!

My favorite of the Grand Canyon landscapes

And then there is sculpture. The Gilcrease owns 18 of the 22 bronze sculptures created by Frederic Remington. They are wonderful, but I found this life-mask of Abraham Lincoln’s face and hands more moving.

There is a nicely done exhibition of artifacts from the Pacific Northwest. This raven effigy made from a whale vertebrae was amazing.

There was an entire wall of original paintings by Audubon. I chose the American Turkey to photograph.

Again I was lucky my back held out, but I sorely regretted not being able to spend more time just standing and enjoying the individual items. We spent 2 hours, and it wasn’t nearly enough. It was also raining so we didn’t go see the historic gardens. Obviously I need another visit!

Mostly Woolaroc

After Hamilton, MO we drove to northeastern Oklahoma and Copan Lake, a relatively small Corps of Engineers lake just at the OK/KS border. Site was fairly unlevel but lovely.

Copan Lake at sunset. Lots of trees in the water.

I set up the sewing machine since we would be here a few days. This is my current setup. I got a bunch of appliqué done, but it was so slow!

I also experimented with our newish Air Fryer from Gourma. I took a “just add water” muffin mix and added some gorgeous blueberries. I reduced the recommended temp by 25 degrees and the time by 15%. It worked!

We found this grumpy snapper trying to cross the road. He was big; his shell was close to 12” long.

Moved this very irritated snapping turtle across the road

We were primarily here to visit some places neither of us had been to since we were kids. The first spot was Woolaroc Animal Preserve and Museum near Bartlesville, OK. It was the retreat of Frank Phillips of Phillips Oil Company (Phillips 66 fame). There is a LOT of old oil money in this part of the state, and they spent lavishly. Frank decided he wanted a large ranch with exotic animals, space for his friends to come out and play cowboy, and to show off the early American artifacts he had. As you enter the attraction (now owned by a foundation), you drive through a series of large animal pens.

Eastern Oklahoma is known as “Green Country” for a reason. The small building is the Phillips family mausoleum.

This year they had a fur trader’s encampment set up with two re-enactors. We are close to the Arkansas River, and fur traders travelled up the river to the mountains.

The older re-enactor was voluble and knowledgeable. He even let Kevin fire his muzzle loader! Kevin didn’t hit the target, but he did get close!

We finally got to the museum. The entry is definitely old school “Noble Savage” style, and much of the interpretation inside is similar. The artifacts make up for it though!

A tiny piece of the outstanding pottery collection at Woolaroc

Hand made birchbark canoe made by an Ojibway woman in Minnesota. They didn’t think she was worthy of identifying by name 🙁

My normally very sore back let me walk through the entire thing, though I didn’t get to dawdle much. All the physical therapy I have been doing seems to be (finally!) working.

Not everything was old. There is a scale model of an oil field and a lot of equipment. The airplane was one of many built by small companies in the heyday of early aircraft. The company that built it no longer exists.

A few miscellaneous things to note:

The restaurant is just a concession stand in these COVID times, but the BBQ bison burger was pretty good. We at dinner at a local diner, the Cohan Restaurant which just happens to be the only one in the very small town. Mediocre, but edible.

Next post will be about the Gilcrease Museum, another incredible place we visited on this trip.

Flexibility is the key to winter travel

We made it to Oklahoma City without any more weather-related issues. We had planned on staying two nights to see family and do some last minute shopping, but the weather gods didn’t agree. It turns out there is a huge storm bringing lots of snow heading to southwestern Texas right along I-10, our original planned route. There is another weather system with lots of snow heading through Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa. However I-40 runs through the middle of those, and it is clear! We haven’t ever been to travel this route at this time of year because it is usually stormy, but we re-routed to travel along that instead of I-10. You have to be flexible when traveling in the winter in a 32,000 pound motorhome! I just won’t travel in the snow, though rain and cold don’t bother me.

With the storm coming in, we cut our planned two day trip short and spent just a few minutes with my sister. I dropped off her presents and that was about it. We have both been isolating seriously, she because her son is special needs and there isn’t a safe alternate caregiver, us because we are heading into what is effectively a medical desert as well as a physical desert. I am pretty pleased with the towels. They are actually from one of my sons, but I did the embroidery. My son has a cabin on Lake Volney in Minnesota, and my sister and nephew have spent time there. Of course she got some of my standard hand made presents this year – bowl cozies. I posted pictures of those two posts back.

We spent the night at Mustang Run RV Park. It is great as a simple overnight stop because the sites are long enough, the roads are wide enough, and they have full hookups available in the winter. Not exactly a garden spot, but it is an easily accessed spot. We were heading west by 6:30 this morning in a heavy fog. Basically I-40 followed the same path as the front, and we stayed in a heavy fog for 300 miles! The advantage of fog is that there is no wind, so I was able to drive at a steady 62 mph the entire day unless we were going through construction zones. I like 62 because that is the sweet spot for our rig in efficiency. After all, we are retired so why hurry!

As we closed in on the New Mexico border, we finally left the fog to find brilliant sun gleaming in partly cloudy skies. It was a very abrupt change and let us get the first glimpses of the lovely mess country. Tonight we are in Tucumcari, NM at a KOA. Nice place with some long sites and easy access. As you have probably noticed by now, we value convenience over beauty when traveling to a destination. How do you like this picture of a scary tree?

We are less than 200 miles from our planned next spot in Albuquerque. We intend on staying there a couple of nights, buying some last minute things we didn’t have time to get before we left. I need some coordinating fabric for some quilt tops I have planned, and Kevin is replacing our busted water softener. Arizona has such hard water, we really need a softener. We will do our last big grocery shopping trip before hitting the desert too.

A few posts ago I mentioned our new slide toppers, but I didn’t have pictures. Here are a couple showing the color. After all, slide toppers are not terribly photogenic.

And we are traveling again!

Between Christmas and the New Year we cleaned the house, put up the Christmas decorations, and tried not to bring too much “stuff”. We left Iowa on New Year’s Day, headed to Yukon, OK to pick up the coach. Everything we well. The motorhome refrigerator worked just fine, and the “penny on a cup of ice” was still on top of the ice when we got there. I do love solar! We spent the evening setting up in a rather boring campground (Mustang Run in Yukon) and putting away all the stuff we brought with us. We spent the next few days just stocking the refrigerator, trying to remember how everything worked (how could we have forgotten so much in 7 weeks?), seeing family, and doing some preventative maintenance. I didn’t take a picture of the campground because it was so boring. Nice long, flat spots with a picnic table, but no trees, no playground, and right next to busy I-40. The traffic was so loud and so continuous that it actually became white noise and didn’t bother us at all trying to sleep. It was convenient for what we needed though, so we will probably stay here again if needed.

Today we drove to Abilene, TX, spending the night in the KOA. It is actually fairly nice. It is next to the highway, but there are enough barriers that the noise isn’t bothersome at all. The campground has lots of long term residents, probably associated with the local oil industry based on the trucks parked in front of the trailers and fifth wheels. Housing is a real issue in the oil fields, and the ones living here are definitely luckier than many. The campground even has some trees and good spacing between the sites.

Long sites plus the mistletoe-garnished trees

We did a huge grocery shopping trip today since we are headed to the Big Bend area tomorrow. We have 350 miles to get to Stillwell Store and RV Park on the east side of Big Bend National Park. We will stay there until we head to our park reservation later in the week. I don’t know when I will have data service, but I will have pictures ready for when I do.