Living Fancy at the Pine Island Resort

After a week at Honey Creek State Park in Grove, Oklahoma, we drove a whopping 15 miles to Pine Island Resort for a 3-night fancy stay. This "resort" is divided into four areas, and we chose a level full-hook-up 50-amp site in Area 2 mainly because we needed to do laundry. It's not glamorous, but it's a fact of life that we often have to choose a site for practical, rather than scenic, reasons. State parks usually have only water and electricity, so washing clothes will fill up our gray water tank in a hurry. We needed those sewer hook-ups so we could wash all the clothes that were over-flowing our hamper. Our washing machine is small, so nine loads later we have all our clothes and linens clean.

Our fancy resort has a hiking trail to the more scenic lake view sites. From the deck of the club house we could look over Grand Lake far below and could spot the state park several miles across the water. Even though it took an hour's drive on winding roads to get here, we actually didn't move very far from our last campground.

We walked from our site to the scenic lookout by hiking some steep hills. It's interesting that the camping spots in that scenic area are down and then up those steep roads where RVs are not allowed.

We got good exercise hiking those steep hills at Pine Island.

Even though the outdoor pool wasn't open yet, we could exercise in the fancy indoor pool. No problem isolating here, as we had the pool to ourselves during the week.

We can afford this "resort" because they offer half-price Passport America rates. Even with two pools, we have to put the word resort in quotes because it didn't feel very upscale. The miniature golf course was covered in pine needles and the tennis courts needed new nets. They have a storage area for RVs so owners can leave them during the off-season. With several trees growing up through this motor home, we are guessing that it has been there for several off-seasons.

So our resort isn't very up-scale, but it served its purpose for tasks to be done, as well as our plan to explore more state parks. From here, we made a road trip to Eucha Lake State Park.

Once there, we found that it is no longer an Oklahoma state park. It is now owned by the city of Tulsa, who charges a boat docking and fishing fee to cover maintenance of the park.

Because we were in no hurry to head home and do more laundry, we took the much longer "scenic" route. That often gets us on gravel roads with questionable upkeep.

But this method of exploring also often takes us to see lovely views of Americana. We loved the sentiment of patriotism, religion, and beautiful lilies at one of those gravel road homes.

The winding roads for the day were so bad that we had to exclaim in delight when we found ourselves on a paved road that actually had a center-line! Really, Denisa was exclaiming in delight because of the lovely white daisies along many of the roads.

A center line and wildflowers is enough to impress us, even when we are living a fancy lifestyle at the Pine Island Resort.