We continued our journey south and headed to Oklahoma. Ed lived in this area decades ago. Our first stop was just east of Oklahoma City. The first night that we are there, I woke up to a noise that I could not immediately place. I finally realized that it was our awning flapping in the wind. The storms, that the weatherman said were going to be well north of the city, took a different path. I quickly put in the awnings and turned on the TV. Not fun to see them talking about 60 and 80 mile an hour gusts, even if they were pretty far away from us. I watched the weather long enough to make sure that the storms had passed and went back to bed with my guys, who slept soundly through the entire event!!
The campground had some interesting features. Do you know what the picture on the right is?
If you guessed fraidy hole tornado shelters you are absolutely correct. At the campground!
The feature that Cole liked the most was the goats. The owners had goats and chickens in a pen near their house. Everytime we went for a walk, Cole headed right to the goats.
We checked out a few fun spots in the area. The University of Oklahoma and Lake Hefner.
Our next stop in Oklahoma was Lake Eufaula. We stayed at the Lake Eufaula State park in Checotah, OK. The park was very nice. It has large level sites with lots of shaded. The shade was very important, because it was hot, like triple digit hot in the afternoon. Between the heat and the fact that the kids were already back in school, we literally had the place to ourselves. Cole was off leash most of the time and he just loved that!!
Cole had fun at the lake. He loves to play at the water’s edge! Check out the video below.
Here is a picture of the dam that creates the lake. Check out the sign that is below the dam.
Oh I almost forgot. Do you know what is special about Checotah, OK? See the picture below for the answer!
Before you ask, yes, it was hot. But hey, it was summer time. Death Valley was more than I expected, the most interesting part was the diversity of the park. I thought that it was just a big, hot valley, but not so much. There is actually a lot of diversity to the terrain.
We checked out several different areas including; Zabriskie Point, that reminded us of the Badlands, the Mesquite Flat...
After beautiful Bryce Canyon, we headed to the last of the 'mighty five' National Parks in Utah, Zion National Park. This park is a little different from many of the ones that we have been to so far. Most of the parks have a scenic route with various pullouts and...
So we thought we had seen the best that Utah National Parks had to offer, and then we went to Bryce Canyon. I can not even begin to describe the beauty in this National Park. The park has an 18 mile scenic drive, with the first 3 miles of the drive called the Bryce...
We continued our journey through southern Utah over to Capital Reef NP. Looking at the map below, our travels took us north of Arches and Canyonlands up to Interstate 70. We headed south and traveled along the western side of Canyonlands NP.
On our way ov...
Cole watching the goats is too cute!
Ohh, I do miss Cole! Of course, you two as well!