Why Would We Be in Oklahoma During the Severe Weather Season?!?

It was cloudy with spitting rain as we drove the motor home out of our camp site at the wildlife refuge. In fact, the main reason that we are leaving is the predicted storms heading into Oklahoma. While we won't be avoiding them, at least we'll have a phone signal and internet to track the storms at our next camp site. Once again, we're in a severe weather advisory! We must be crazy to be spending so much time in Oklahoma during the spring storm season!

After a two-hour drive north, we arrived at our new campground. Now we're in central Oklahoma, near Arcadia Lake in Edmond, Oklahoma. This city-owned lake has two camping options, and we chose the less busy Scissortail Campground. Arriving on a Monday, we had our choices of sites. Once again we think we got the best one. We have good shade throughout the day and a 50-amp electrical site.

This campground is unique in several ways. One is the water hook-up. Spigots are scattered throughout the park, but none of them are easy to access. One of our criteria for selecting our spot was its proximity to one of those spigots. By using our four water hoses and our y-splitter, we're able to even have water hook-ups at this spacious site.

The other unique part is the check-in process. During busier summer months, a gate guard will help to find camping spots available. But during spring months during the week, we were left to figure out this board on our own.

The payment envelopes include a green tear-off slip that should be slipped into the correct site number slot to insure your spot is reserved. An empty camp site is not always available, as Edmond residents can pay and thus save spots when they slip that green reserved pay slip into their favorite slot. In our 4.5 years of travel we've never seen anything quite like this system.

We lived the first 50+ years of our lives in Oklahoma, so we know well that spring weather can be hazardous. When we started full-time RVing, we planned to stay clear of the spring severe weather season. But here we are in the heart of it! We would have several days with a rainy view out our front window, and the local weatherman pre-empted all the regular programming to give minute-by-minute updates on the latest storms.

The wall clouds that spawn tornadoes often make for beautiful skies.

But we know that these lovely clouds can be treacherous. At the campground we are surrounded by trees, so we couldn't see the unusual cloud formations the evening of an outbreak of severe weather. Denisa's sister took these pictures from her backyard a few miles away from us.

The first full day we were here, more than two dozen tornadoes were reported in various parts of the state. We were relieved that Edmond was not one of those various parts. Remind me again why we are here now?

It's because we have family activities planned! Even the threat of high winds, hail, and tornadoes wouldn't keep us away. We can drive to see either of Denisa's sisters in minutes (rather than hours) from our spot here at Lake Arcadia. 

Our youngest son's house is also minutes away. It was nice to be close enough for a quick lunch, or a group dinner with his wife. Denisa snapped these pictures of the beautiful irises that are blooming at their house. So spring does mean some good things in Oklahoma.

Spring also means babies, and we have two pairs of Canadian Geese parading their goslings around the lake.

Those fuzzy goslings were usually out in the mornings when Denisa made her one-mile walk around the campground circle.

We never got good pictures, but we were also camping with a big flock of cardinals that always flew from their perches just as Denisa tried to take their picture. We almost always spotted at least two deer in the woods around our site when we wandered from our site.

So after we survived the first couple days of severe weather, we decided that maybe it's not such a bad idea to visit Oklahoma in the spring after all. Because the real reason we are here is still to come. . .