TRAVEL DAY
From: Doris Campground, OK – Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge.
To: Foss State Park, OK – Washita National Wildlife Refuge.
Day 59 – It was 40 degrees when we got up and cloudy, but NOT windy. We’re leaving today for another campground hoping to be settled in before the very windy weather arrives. We departed Wichita Mountains NWR, Doris Campground at 11:45 a.m., after dumping tanks. Rob had some help from Wild Turkeys, that weren’t so “wild”; they were meandering around the area. It was 64 degrees and cloudy.
The drive was mostly on a two-lane highway which ran south to north. The topography was flat, flat, flat once we left the Wichita Mountains, becoming prairie land and farm fields. LOTS of cows grazing on the prairie – not Texas Longhorns, though, no Buffalo, either. There were also plenty of hawks flying over or swooping down after small prey in the fields. The main crops appeared to be cotton and plenty of corn and wheat – all harvested already. There were also some wind turbines and oil wells. As we got closer to our destination, there began to be some rolling hills, and the soil turned to a red clay color. The wheat and grasses in the fields were yellow to white and the dirt was red, and the colors were surprisingly vibrant, especially when the clouds started to clear and the sky was so blue.
It all sounds well and good, but we did want to mention that driving through some of the small Oklahoma towns really made us feel sad. So many people living in poverty, their towns dying, boarded up windows, obviously thriving at one time but everything closed now, they were living in shacks or run-down, almost unlivable trailers, dilapidated barns no longer in use. A dusty hell. The poverty in this country; the inequality. And the drought. It’s only going to get worse. The last time we felt this way was in the south. I felt almost ashamed, driving by with a Honda CRV attached to a RV. No wonder there’s so much anger these days.
We arrived at Foss State Park near Butler, OK at 1:45 p.m. It was 71 degrees and partly cloudy. The State Park land was spread out around parts of Foss Lake. There were 8 campgrounds in different locations around the Lake. We stopped at the Park Office; of course, no one was there. We picked up a map of the overall Park; there was not a map of the individual campsites. We’d never been here before, so we knew we would have to drive through the campgrounds to pick a campsite. We hadn’t had lunch yet, and the cats were antsy, so we ate our lunch and visited with the girls while still in the Park Office parking lot. (It is not wise to search 8 campgrounds when hungry; some of us, namely me, get a bit irritable when hungry, LOL.)
To narrow down our search, after lunch and before leaving to find a site, we went online to travelok.com to see what was available (signs throughout the Park tell you that you cannot occupy a campsite until you have a reservation). This told us that out of the 8 campgrounds, 3 were closed for the season and 2 were primitive tent camping only. That narrowed it down a bit! We wrote down which sites were already reserved at the remaining three campgrounds and took off to find our home from the next several days.
The first campground had no reservations; all sites were available. Turned out to be the “equestrian” camping area with paddocks for the horses. The second campground was the popular one with only one campsite available. It had 15 sites, all with water views overlooking the lake and all lined up fairly close together. The third campground had a variety of sites, some close together, some with full hook-ups including sewer, some near the road, etc. The sites were not near the water. It took us several trips through this campground, before we settled on site #25 with electric and water hook-ups. We reserved the site and set up camp. And we were glad we’d stopped to have lunch first!
A breeze was blowing and it was sunny and warm. Very nice. No one was camped near us, yet, but campers were due to come in next to us for 4 nights beginning tonight. We wondered with the upcoming wind storm whether they would show up. The girls like it here right now, but when the heavy wind comes tomorrow, they will be scared. We have three nice trees at our site. They have no leaves on them, but they do provide a little shade. So far, so good.