Decision Time

The end of July 2016 is at hand.  We've been "home" for nearly a month (see Change of Address) and our plans for summer travels have evolved significantly.  The idea of heading to higher altitudes for cooler air after a family tour through Texas is off the table.  Seems the great recession of 2008 has finally released its grip on RV'ing and campgrounds are booked solid, at least where it is not scorching hot.  Regardless, we've got hitch-itch and are looking to move on.

After a couple of false starts over a two week period, one morning we get up and everything clicks.  We are hitched up and pulling out of our parking lot with hook-ups.  You know, we never did have any neighbors the whole month we were here.  One guy dropped a trailer and left it for about 10 days but never hooked it up, never occupied it.  Another person started to back in late one night during a thunder storm but changed their mind and pulled away.  It was a pretty bleak place after all.

Even though we were pulling out we had not decided where to go.  As we approached the one intersection in town that will take you either west to New Mexico or east to Oklahoma we were still trying to decide what to do.  If we go west we may spend all our time moving from campground to campground that have a one night opening, if we go east, getting a spot in a blistering hot campground will be no problem.  Being able to stay in one spot for more than 24 hours did it, we turned east.

Borger, TX is interestingly located.  The road doesn't go through here to anywhere.  You only get here if this is your destination.  But, once you are here you are equally far from Dallas, TX to the south or Denver, CO. to the north at approximately 7 hours each.  Or, Albuquerque, NM to the west or Oklahoma City, OK to the east at about 4.5 hours.  We're headed for a campground we are familiar with on the west side of Oklahoma City so our travel time will be right at four hours.  We are not going to avoid hot pavement today as it is already well into the 90's at ten in the morning.

Our objective for the day is Mustang Run RV Park.  We stayed in this park almost three years ago on our initial drive west.  It was brand new back then, in fact it wasn't even officially opened.  The RV pads were finished but the office/club house was a couple months shy of being occupy-able.  But they were taking people pulling in off of I-40 like us and had a decent rate so we stayed a couple of days.

The place is finished now and the office/clubhouse/pool is pretty fancy schmancy.  Cyndee and I care nothing about RV parks except for their location, quality of their RV pads and hook-ups.  The only reason to go into the office is to register and pay for our site.  This place has pulled out all the stops as far as clubhouses go and they have jacked up their rates accordingly.  Forty nine bucks a night for a campground that is right up against an interstate highway with heavy truck traffic all night long is not my idea of a good deal.  But we are here so we'll take a couple of nights and look for something else to use as a base-camp for exploring Oklahoma City.

I know I sound like a broken record but man, is it hot!  At least when we were in the Texas panhandle the 3,500 foot elevation kept the air dry.  But now that we have dropped down off the caprock the humidity is up, pushing heat indexes to a place Cyndee doesn't even want to know about.

Heat be damned, we're going exploring.  We have known about OKC's old part of town, "Bricktown", for decades.  I-40 essentially passes right over it as the interstate transects the city.  On numerous trips that both Cyndee's and my family took since I-40 was completed in the 60's we have looked down into Bricktown as we jostled (this part of the interstate is always in need of serious pot-hole repair) across this elevated portion of the highway.

Bricktown, near where the canal terminates at the Bass Pro Shop

Today, for the first time, we are not passing over.  We are coming in under the interstate and going to do the main drag.  And we are not the only ones, there is plenty of cruising going on this late weekday afternoon.

Bricktown was originally an industrial center that bloomed at the turn of the twentieth century.  But like many industrial districts in the U.S., it did not survive modern economy, beginning with the Great Depression.  The district fell into disrepair, most of it becoming completely derelict.  A visionary mayor in the 90's convinced citizens to approve taxes to revitalize the district.  A minor league baseball park and navigable canal were completed in '98 and '99 respectively and museums, bars, restaraunts, shops, and hotels followed.  Its a vibrant place now with throngs of people.

Canal lined with restaurants and bars. 

Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, home of the
Oklahoma City Dodgers, a Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers

Having done the main drag and scoped out our plan for what we want to see and do tomorrow at Bricktown, we head to an Oklahoma original, Sonic Drive In for supper.  There is one just across the street from the campground and the sun should be down by the time we get there.