September 28, 2010 Mingo RV Park Tulsa, OK

Yesterday we drove across the northern part of New Mexico and into the panhandle of Oklahoma. We did finally get out of the mountains and into some desert area that was a somewhat lower altitude. Around the border of NM and OK, we got into some farm country where we actually saw a few corn fields. Mostly though it was hay fields and cattle grazing ground. We saw quite a few animals, usually around the cattle, that at first we thought were deer. When we got a closer look, we decided they weren’t deer, but maybe antelope. They had a white belly and tail and some muted white stripes up their chest. They were usually too far away to get a good picture, but there would be about 6 to 10 out near a herd of cattle.

Another unusual sighting, that Larry spotted several times, was tarantulas crossing the road. At first he thought it was some kind of large bug, then decided it was a spider. I never did see them, but he said he wouldn’t realize that was what it was till we were almost on top of them and it was too late for me to see them.

The OK panhandle is very long! And very sparsely populated! Larry was worried that we didn’t have a campground reservation. I argued that we’d find a campground along the way. Guess what? We began to think we weren’t going to find one at all. People joke that you can always pull into a Wal-Mart parking lot. Wal-Mart? There weren’t ANY of those around. We planned on a campground at Guymon, OK, that had shown up on our trip planning software, even though it was a little earlier than we wanted to stop. When we got to Guymon, there was no campground. We finally located a State Park on the trip planner, called and they said they were open and had space for us. So we drove a couple of hours LONGER than we had wanted to, but it was a real nice place.

The good thing about the long day yesterday was the shorter trip it made for today. I had called my nephew, Jim Gambill, yesterday and told him we would be passing through Tulsa today and wondered if we could get together for a little while. We talked a couple of times today and Jim and Johnna came to meet us at the campground shortly after we got here. Their daughter, Elena, had a softball game this evening, so their evening was taken. We would have gone to the game, but they didn’t think she would actually be playing because it was a “Seniors” game, and she is a sophomore. She is usually a starter, but this was to be a special game as the last home game for the seniors, but they needed to be there to help set up. We did have a good visit with the two of them but we missed seeing either of the kids.

We’ll head out from here tomorrow and stop by Branson for a visit with Velma and Burnell (Karen’s sister & brother-in-law). We’ll be home in a couple of days.