August 2nd, Lake Thunderbird State Park, OK

  

  


Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Day 38
Drive to Lake Thunderbird State Park, OK

We left Texas this morning and the weather was cool, but getting hotter than yesterday. By the time we crossed into Oklahoma it was in the low- to mid-90s. We stopped at the Route 66 Museum in Oklahoma. It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision, but it was worth it. It was inexpensive, only 8 dollars for all of us, and it was a very nice, small museum. We ate lunch in the parking lot (in the RV) before going in.

The reason we ended up deciding to stop was because in the side-view mirror, Rod could see that one of the moldings on the trailer was flapping in the breeze. It had come partially off and we needed to stick it back in. There were no rest areas nearby, so I noticed we were near this attraction, and it sounded good.

Next we drove through Oklahoma City. The road was horrible, and we felt like we were on a NYC road. We have also decided that people in this area of the country do not know how to merge properly. Also, the highways through Oklahoma City had a lot of interchanges that were NOT well marked. Suddenly lanes would become “exit only” lanes without much warning, there were splits that were not marked more than a few hundred feet ahead, as if you were supposed to know what lane to get in. At least in NY there is fair warning, like a mile or more before a split that it is coming up. At one point we had to move over one lane to the left and someone else decided to move over to the right immediately in front of us, even though we had our turn signal on for EVER. Well we missed them by inches, and I think my heart stopped momentarily.

Anyway, we drove to Lake Thunderbird State Park, in the southeast corner of the Oklahoma City limits. We did not know if it would be nice or not, and it is GREAT! The lake is huge. The campsites have full hookups available at reasonable prices. The pads are LEVEL with nice concrete picnic tables. We are right on the lake and we took Brownie swimming right away. She was sooooooo happy!

When we arrived at like 4:30 it was 102 degrees, but windy, which helps. It is now around 88 degrees at 9:30 at night! The water must have been around 85 degrees, with the most wonderful red silt for a beach! It was soft and NO ROCKS! We just layed in the water and built sand (silt) castles on the shore. Brownie was so happy to see water that she ran in as fast as her legs would take her and she was in for at least an hour. Running back and forth and swimming out in little circles was great exercise for her! We were the only people on this part of the beach and then some young boys came and were in our area. There were lots of boats and jet-skis. Nice place, I highly recommend it.

Thank God for the full hook-ups, because we would have died without the AC today and tonight. It has barely shut off and we have it set at 80 degrees. We even get TV stations on the antennae here, since we’re close to the city.

On the deer front: we saw 3 deer here in the park today, Rodney was in the trailer, so he missed it. But, we did not see deer in Texas at all, and in New Mexico we only saw 2 dead deer on the side of the road.