Guymon, OK

Saturday May 02

We left Ponca City this morning continuing our trip back home. We could have spent a lot more time here. Marilyn made us feel so welcome that we wished we had more time.

The Oklahoma panhandle was also known as "no man's land". When the Texas Republic sought to join the US, it was forced to give up it's land North of the 36°30' parallel as the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery north of that parallel. The area was declared public land but because it had not been survey, it could not be legally settled. It remains sparsely populated today with less than 8,000 families as of the last census.

After a day's drive of about 275 miles and 8 hours, we arrived in Guymon near the west end of no-man's-land. A city park there offered free overnight parking for RV's. We found the park offered a visitor's center and a dump station. It was after 5pm and the visitor's center was closed.

We parked in a side parking lot as there was a big rig parked in front. An Oklahoma State Patrol office was located directly across the street from our location. We explored the town and stopped to shop at a Walmart, where else? We had a good, quite nights sleep.

Mean While Back in North Carolina

I got kinda behind in NC partly because we were so busy and partly because I took so many pictures but mostly because I might have gotten a little lazy. Anyway I am going to try to post some picture of our visit there at the bottom of each post.

Easter eggs:



Beautiful weather:

Ponca City, OK

Monday April 30th

Well we were unable to locate my Mom's house and the consensus is that it had been torn down. Unless the streets have been renamed and we were looking in the wrong place, that appears to be the case.

We left for Ponca City, OK this morning and arrived at Big Chief RV Park between thunderstorms. On the driveway into the park we passed the owner at the side of the driveway digging a trench to try to drain the standing water off the drive. We were lead to our site that appeared to be a swamp in the middle of a hobo camp. The areas between the sites were underwater and the crowned gravel sites were in varying degrees of flooding.


This wouldn't have been so bad but all the utilities were in the middle of that area. What could have been a good feature, the large spacing between site, just made the distance to the hookup's that much further away and deeper underwater. Between storms it did drain a little bit as you can see in the picture it has gone down some. You can also see some of the junk that's scattered around. That stuff next to the motorhome was there when we arrived! My cousin, Marilyn was excited to hear we had arrived and we met her for a late breakfast downtown. We had a great visit with her and also saw her dad for a short visit. She took us out for dinner to a great steak house where we met more of the family, her daughter Jamie and husband Sammy, their son and Sammy's dad, Sam. The dinner was fantastic. It was agreat place and Marilyn picked up the tab! Thanks Marilyn for a triffic visit.

We left on Saturday, heading down the Oklahoma panhandle toward Guymon, OK where we planned to spend the night in the city park.

Ada, Oklahoma

Monday April 27th

On Sunday we drove from Paducah, Kentucky, where Debbie went to a quilt show, to Little Rock, Arkansas. The weather was overcast, warm and humid. There was a heavy downpour as we drove through the Nashville area. So far we have avoided all the lightning, hail and tornadoes. We spent the night in the Camping World parking lot in North Little Rock. We pulled in around 4:30pm and found a fairly level parking spot. We ran the generator for several hours to keep the air conditioner on as it was 87 degrees out and we were sitting in the sun.

Today was another long drive from North Little Rock to Ada, Oklahoma. On the way we ran into a big traffic jam caused by a pickup truck fire that blocked all the south bound lanes. Ty's nap


was interrupted but you can barely tell by looking at him.


Ten degrees cooler and still overcast. We are staying at Twin Lakes RV park here in Ada. It's a small park with a very friendly owner, great WiFi and Cable.

Ty needs a stool if he wants to help fix dinner.


Tomorrow we will try to locate my mother's old house here in Ada and my grandparent's farm just outside the nearby community of Francis.