09/15/10 On the Road Again

We are on the road today- headed for Ohio. Cindi posted the pics yesterday of Curtis Watkin’s Restaurant- siteof several wonderful and very filling breakfasts and a couple pics of our site at Wes Watkins Reservoir. Our camping site there was large and except for the weekend, very secluded – only one other RV there most of the time. Isn’t Shing’s silver Mercedes pretty? Rick sure enjoyed driving it. We did sing a little Janis Joplin…”Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz”… Don and Rick have made an excellent pit crew getting the “coach” and the towed car ready to go. We may have to get them matching shirts identifying them as such. There’s also a great pic of all of us @ Karl & Viv’s house taken by their granddaughter. We had an excellent time.

Yesterday afternoon we stopped in Joplin @ a Walgreens to get an Rx for Cindi and do some snack shopping – traveling makes you really hungry. And here’s a plug for Walgreens – great to use when you are traveling – they have all your “stuff” in the computer and there was no hassle for Cindi to get her medications at all. Don drove us out of Joplin and back on I44. We watched a storm for almost 50 miles before we were in it. Amazingly dramatic skies with very dark purple/gray clouds and lighter ones underneath. Then we drove through rain and would eventually see a giant rainbow that would seem to have one end on the west bound lanes. We must have seen 3 or 4 rainbows as we drove the next 50 miles. We stopped at an RV park in Phillipsburg MO and the rain had slacked off but it started again about 9 with a vengeance. We were watching the one channel our antenna would bring in when programming was interrupted for a tornado warning several counties away. We checked the weather channel and you can see the pic of the storm headed toward us – no big wind threatened us but the rain came down in buckets.
Missouri has MoDOT – looks funny on their signs. We are going around St. Louis today - Arch sighting from afar but we will cross the Big Muddy and head into Illinois – hoping to make 400 miles today and roll into Elida mid day Friday.

9-15

9-14

Sightseeing in OKC and a lot of rain

Lots of sightseeing pics. We went to the bombing site memorial park first and Doug, Marvilee & Chad joined us. It's very peaceful there. The ceramic tiles in the pics were made by school children supporting the families of the victims as well as the rescue workers. The large Elm is called the Survirors Tree as it did survive the the blast.

Then we went to Bricktown - some of the pics are in front of the baseball park - honoring Micky Mantle & Johnny Bench. There is also a OKC jazz group called the Flaming Lips as evidenced by the street signs. Marvilee looks great with a tail - cool photo opportunities provided by the OKC zoo. We went on a canal boat ride that passes the statues memorializing the OK land rush. The sculpter is continuing to add to the sculptures that cross the canal. You can almost feel them whooshing by.

Then we headed across town to an IMAX 3D movie - we hoped for Avatar and our online search indicated that it was showing but when Rick and Don went to get the tickets while the rest of us were finishing an excellent Mexican dinner it turned out that "Resident Evil- The AfterLife" was showing. So in the interest of checking out 3D IMAX, we went. Pretty awful. So bad that it was almost comical. General consensus - 3D IMAX is not much better than regular 3D & any movie based on a video game is likely to be awful.

The last few pics are from Sunday morning. We headed out to breakfast - the place with the waitresses with burgundy uniforms - and it started raining. A lot. The last pic is of the campers that us move sites on Saturday - all because they wanted a pull through spot. We're not bitter.

We are having dinner @ a Thai place this evening with the Drummers and will be heading out tomorrow. It's been great so far - the D.O.N.E. trip is winding down but we've had so much fun.

9-13 Downtown OKC ....and a movie

9-12 RAIN!

Rain in Oklahoma

We are having a football Sunday at our campsite. We had a great time at Chad and Mae's house yesterday watching the Buckeyes beat Miami. Great game. Chad is a Buckeye through and through and 8 year Nathan has a very good grasp of the game. Lots of fun. Cindi and Marvilee had a chance to catch up and Mae and Chad were very gracious hosts with a beautiful home. Then we headed back to camp and had a wonderful steak dinner with Viv and Carl. No campfire but many lies were told. The stars were very bright.



The pics posted today were from the 45th infantry museum and a barbecue place called the Rib Crib. We had a great lunch there with a friendly waitress who volunteered to take the group picture.



This morning we were alerted by Cory (the campground manager dude) that a thunderstorm was approaching with possible hail and winds to 35-40 mph. Oklahomans take storms very seriously. We battened down the hatches and went out for breakfast. No hail and not much wind but a whole lot of rain. We had a really good breakfast and dried out at Charles Watkins Diner. Good coffee & excellent breakfast served by waitresses wearing uniforms that looked like the 60's - burgundy with white piping trim. A quick stop at the Country Boy for beer, charcoal, and ice. Survey of the campers confirms we are using 20-30 pounds of ice a day. Probably approaching 250 pounds so far this trip. The sun is coming out - sticky and way warmer here than in Eilda.



The folks that moved into our spot yesterday afternoon are hooking up their trailer. We won't be moving back- not worth the hassle.



Marvelee & Doug are on their way. We are having an excellent time. Oklahoma seems to be full of very freindly folks.

9-11