Because we are camped very near to our old stomping grounds, we don't do much sight-seeing. Basically, we've "been there, done that." But sometimes we will play tourist in the Oklahoma City area when something new or different catches our attention. That would happen when we found out that a newly refurbished Mormon Temple in Yukon, Oklahoma, was open to visitors for a very limited time.
It is interesting to note that non-church-members are only allowed inside a Mormon temple before it is dedicated. Back in 2000, Denisa had visited this same temple before its original dedication. Because water damage caused a major renovation, the building is once more open before its rededication, and we decided to take their tour.
No pictures are allowed inside, but we can verify that the interior is very beautiful. Only Mormons with special referrals from their local church will be allowed inside after the dedication. That dedication was scheduled for two days after we had our tour.
No expense was spared on the hand-made rugs and furnishings. In order to protect the light-colored carpeting, volunteers placed shoe covers on our feet before we entered, and then removed them on our way out. They have already had 19,000 guests during this short open house period, so that is a lot of foot traffic.
The grounds were already planted with flowers so the outside would be as beautiful as the inside.
Another day, Denisa got to take a quick walk through the Oklahoma City Zoo with her sister. We saw lions, and otters, and bears (oh my!) But the only good picture she took was of a roaming peacock showing off those amazingly colorful feathers.
Another afternoon included a walk around the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman.
We walked through the library, one of our son's favorite places to study when he was an undergraduate here.
It is a lovely campus for a walk, with most of the buildings repeating something they call "Cherokee Gothic" style. Luke remembers the ice storm that splintered many of the beautiful old trees on campus. So we were glad to see the new trees are now getting big enough to once again shade the sidewalks.
It was a nice day for a walk on campus with our children and granddaughter. Our family is certainly a "house divided." This son with two degrees from OU married a woman with a degree and solid roots at OSU. Our younger son graduated from OSU, and is married to an OU alumni. So we may see major competition when our grandchildren are deciding where to go to college.
In this picture of both grandfathers and Carter, we're guessing that "Pops" (wearing the OSU orange shirt) does not relish the idea of his granddaughter getting comfortable on the OU campus.
Since we like strolling on college campuses all over the country, this was not an unusual stop for us. Our walks always include a football stadium picture, so we had to snap this picture of the north entrance to Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.
On another day, we made the drive across Oklahoma City to Lake Hefner. A 10-mile biking/hiking trail that surrounds the lake is a favorite with Oklahoma City residents. The walk out to the lighthouse was also popular on this beautiful weather evening.
But we're not here to walk this time. We're here to celebrate Mother's Day with our youngest son and his wife. They are treating their Mothers to a meal out at the lake. This area is a great place to watch the sunset at the outdoor seating area of several upscale restaurants on the lake.
A delicious meal at the Redrock Grill was topped off with the best Key Lime pie we have ever tasted. What a great celebration!
Most of our time in the Oklahoma City area included fond memories of eating, playing games, and spending time with family. But it was also fun to spend a little time playing tourist with our family as well.
The reason we planned to be in central Oklahoma during spring storm season is to attend a very special celebration. That would be the first birthday of our first granddaughter. Here's Granddad and Carter practicing their happy-birthday-surprise faces before the party started.
Even though they live near Kansas City now, our son and daughter-in-law decided to have this momentous birthday party in Oklahoma so more family and friends could attend.
We got there early in the morning to help make treats and set up for the party. A goodie table for all kinds of appetites was set up in the dining room.
That would include decorated cookies,
six kinds of fruit, chips and dips, appetizers, gluten-free cupcakes,
and dipped pretzel sticks with coarse sugar "spines" to follow the cactus theme.
Carter timed her afternoon nap perfectly, waking up rested and refreshed to greet her guests. Those guests would include her parents and her Uncle Blake and Aunt Claire. (See how we tied that in so we could include a picture of all our kids together!)
A total of 69 friends and relatives made a special trip to wish her a happy first birthday. What a special day it was! When it came time for her personal smash cake, Carter politely picked at the butter cream frosting. Even though most of it stayed on her face and hands, some of it went into her mouth. This was her first experience with something so sweet, and she seemed to have an affinity for eating sweet things. She must take after her grandparents.
Then Mom helped by cutting into the cake, and Carter got to really experience her "smash cake."
Carter was completely clue-less that she was the center of attention. She had no idea that all these presents had been specially selected just for her.
After a week of storms and rain, we were blessed with perfect weather for the party. That's a good thing, because even a sizable home would seem crowded with 69 guests. So it was good that we could spill into the back yard. We took lots of pictures, including a family portrait with our two sons and daughter-in-laws, and of course the guest of honor.
Denisa wanted lots of pictures on the blog so she can look back at them and smile. We hope they make you smile as well.
The one thing in common in each picture was our sweet Carter. We can't believe this little bundle of sunshine is already one year old. We love her so much!
Happy birthday sweet Carter!
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. . .
Our campground at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge is right on Quanah Parker Lake. In fact, we can walk to the north shore of the lake without leaving our camp site. This premier location brought us lots of foot traffic during the weekend when neighboring campers walked through our site to get to the lake. We noticed that a sign was posted at the campground entrance that the 23 electrical sites were all full by Thursday afternoon. By Friday all 90 of the camping sites were full. It was a busy campground during the weekend! By Monday morning all the weekenders went home, and we were back to our peaceful piece of nature. But it was time for us to leave as well. Before we left, we decided to take advantage of the peaceful waters to get our kayak out on our lake. But that big bank of clouds coming up might mean we need to paddle fast.
We had the lake to ourselves on a weekday morning. The wildlife were enjoying the solitude as well, as we paddled around the edges of the water. Our first wildlife sighting was this pair of Canadian Geese standing in the shallows.
This is possibly the only circumstance that we will be able to view a herd of longhorns while we are sitting in our kayak on the water.
This group was coming to the lake for a morning drink.
The water lily stems are just now growing long enough for the leaves to peek up through the surface of the water. We found that the big drops of water on those new leaves dance like diamonds as we rowed past in our kayak.
We love bird watching from the kayak, where we can stealthily approach from the water. This great blue heron was intent on fishing, and let us get quite close for a clear picture.
Then he made a fast poke into the water. Score! He came up with a fish flopping in his beak.
We were fascinated with his fishing technique, and watched as he relocated to a new area. With that brightly-colored bobber on the lower left corner, it looks like that heron was using a new fishing technique to catch his breakfast.
He finally flew to this perch on the fishing pier nearby. We're used to seeing these big birds standing in the water, so it's unusual to see one hanging on to a metal rail. When we looked at the picture later, we saw that we had caught two birds in the frame as a little one swooped into the picture on the left.
That would be one of the many swallows dipping and diving around the fishing pier where they are nesting. This pair stayed perched on a cement post while we stealthily glided in the water towards them.
As we made our circle around the edge of Lake Quanah Parker, we came to our backyard. If you look through the trees you can see our motor home parked in the forest. What a great camp site it has been!
We've had some rain during our five days here, and that has slowed down some of our hiking. On the map we see that there's a trail that goes from our campground to Little Baldy (pictured below), but we never got the chance to make that hike. I guess we'll have to come back!
While kayaking, it's always fun to sneak up on turtles. This guy let us get quite close, and we could even see his reflection in the clear water. We like our stealthy kayak, and Mark is great at bringing us quietly up close.
The clouds were building, and by the time we got the kayak out of the water it was completely overcast. So we loaded up our inflatable Sea Eagle kayak, and headed back to the motor home. It's moving day, so after pulling up the jacks and emptying the tanks, we are on the road out of the wildlife refuge. It looked like it could rain any minute as we passed the best known mountain in the refuge. This is Mount Scott, which is famous for the great views from the top. Normally this is an easy summit because there is a 3-mile paved road to the top. But heavy rains have compromised the road and it is closed to automobile traffic. Now we are seeing cars parked on the side of the road as people are forced to hike up that road to get those views from the top.
That vista of Mount Scott is our last view of the Wichita Mountains as we leave the refuge. It's a sweet good-bye to our time here as we continue our journey northward.
