Oklahoma is OK?

As you may know it is our goal to only drive 300 miles a day.  That way we don't have to get going super fast in the morning.  But mostly so we can take our time and stop along the way and to mostly make sure we arrive at our next stop well before dark.  Plus we're not exhausted, we can take advantage of the overnight stop and enjoy dinner.

So our first trip was about 305 miles.  We stopped for lunch and had a picnic.  Took a walk around the rest stop.  We fueled up at the last Missouri station and arrived in Grove, OK for the week.  It was raining when we got here, but we got hooked up ok.

The kids were disappointed that they couldn't jump in the pool.  But we had dinner and settled in.  Then came the fire truck.  It drove around the campground with the lights & siren going. We thought maybe a fire?  Maybe someones COVID birthday celebration?  It was raining pretty hard.  Soon the gate attendant knocked on the door.  "Tornado coming".  Holy crap!  We grabbed shoes, jackets & flashlights and ran to the designated tornado shelter.  It was a beat-up old gas station.  It was made of concrete so it must be safer than CC.  Everyone from our section of the park was there.  They had plenty of chairs, but the place was poorly maintained and the roof leaked.  But it was safe.

Me & my tornado buddy!

The rainy weather pattern kind of hung around.  No more tornado issues, but LOTS of rain.  I'm beginning to think that Oklahoma is an Indian word for rain. Tuesday & Wednesday were mostly rain.  But there were some breaks & the kids got in the pool.  The chilly pool, but they didn't seem to mind.  They were swimming and happy.

Wednesday was Mica's 10th Birthday so she wanted Mexican food so luckily restaurants are open here so we had a nice lunch.  Mica got the Birthday treatment, which includes a sneaky pie in the face.  Kolton got caught in collateral damage....

Kolton didn't seem impressed

Outside it was still raining so we went to the grocery store...

Thursday the weather finally changed.  A quick check of "tourist"attractions showed that although things were starting to opening up, the Cherokee village and other sites weren't opening until next week.  So we had to settle with just the pool.  The kids took advantage of that!  Maybe to exhaustion.  Look what washed up on shore.

We settled for the pool everyday.  At least three hours a day.  We really went through the sunscreen and avoided any real sunburn. 

We got to try our new propane fire pit.  I know, what are we thinking, propane????  But with us moving a lot and restrictions on carrying firewood across state lines this solved the problem.  When we get to a new campground we would normally have to buy firewood.  Usually $5 a bundle and it's not that big of a bundle.  With propane we can s'more every night, anywhere!  Which makes the kids happy.  We were at Camping World and found one on sale.  It was a nice size and it was the last one there, it was a display model.  Rita negotiated 20% more off the sale price.  So we bought it.  It works great!

We are leaving here Monday on our journey to the desert.  The desert in June?  Are we nuts?  Yeah, probably.  But we are going to Olstrom's Custom Coach for some upgrades to CC.  We'll survive.  I hope....