CuRVWander

We are clearing out of Oklahoma City.  While we could blame the heat it really would not be a good reason because there is nowhere we could go that is not just as hot.  We would be thrilled if we could just have some days below triple-digit.  But we are just going to settle for a campground that is a little more friendly to the budget. A few hours from OKC is a little town in the northeast corner of the state named Bartlesville.  We'll go from the dusty plains to the distant foothills of the Ozark Mountains and what the locals call "Green Country". Now, if you are in the oil business you probably, well maybe, have heard of this town.  Like Cyndee's and my home town of Borger, Tx, it pretty much exists because of oil. Bartlesville 1910 The connection is actually even tighter.  The driving force behind the oil in both towns is Phillips 66.  Our home of Borger is the oil industry's home of the world's largest inland refinery owned by Phil...

We ended yesterday scouting out things to do and see today.  There are so many things in Oklahoma City to choose from that I did not expect to be talking about going to the Museum of Osteology.  That's right, we are going to go see bones. But surprise, surprise this place turned out to be way more interesting than I would have ever expected.  Seems that the proprietor developed a knack for assembling and articulating bones he found in the woods as a kid.  That interest stayed with him into adulthood and now he is sought out by museums and science institutions world-wide.  His collection in OKC is the largest in the world. The museum is not just big in the number of exhibits but the size of the exhibits too. That's a full-size giraffe in the foreground, Humpback Whale in the center and West Indian Manatee above the whale Just as impressive as the big exhibits were the tiny ones.  One exhibit has a hummingbird skeleton (Ruby Throated) as if cau...

All of July has been brutally hot for our 2016 stops in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and now Oklahoma.  We thought starting out for Bricktown early this morning and catching a water taxi first thing would be the cooler way to go.  We were mistaken, it did not even cool off below 90 degrees last night.  Oh well.  It is as cool as it is going to be so off we go. As mentioned in the last post, Bricktown is a revitalized industrial section of the old city (Oklahoma City).  So instead of belching smoke and pumping out manufactured goods it now feeds throngs and quenches the thirst of pub crawlers with enough shopping for anyone to drop from.  A navigable canal winds its way through the district going past all the restaurants, bars and shops.  With the name "water taxi" we had expectations we would be able to get on and off at points of our choosing.  But like the hope for cooler temperatures it was not to be either. Water taxis at the Bricktown c...

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 ...

Since starting our fulltiming adventures in 2012 there is one thing that we have learned that is fundamental to being happy - be flexible!  Sure, you have to make plans and have a general idea of what you want to do and where you want to be at any given time, just don't carve any of those plans in stone.  So far this whole summer has been one change in plan after another, we have been practicing our flexibility skills to the max. It started with our blowouts (two of them) on the trailer at the very beginning of our trek west from Georgia to Texas.  Our planned layover in New Orleans had to be skipped because the downtime for repairs used up the days we had set aside for touring The Big Easy.  However,  there is body damage that will need to be addressed and will need a trip to the factory to be done.  That is an unplanned trip to Kansas.  A call to the service manager revealed that we can't get in until August 22, almost two months from now.  So...

The first day of July 2016 finds us in the town that we both grew up in.  Our time here was from the mid-1950's until the mid-1980's with a short break for being away for school and the first job after graduation (which was only 175 miles away).  The next thirty years were in Georgia with a brief, 4-year period in Oklahoma.  Borger was built and has continued to exist for one reason - oil.  It is an oil town through and through with the worlds largest inland refinery as its economic engine and pumping oil out of the ground a close second.  As the oil business has risen and fallen so has the town.  But the busts have outweighed the booms and the town is a little worse for the wear.  We remember when we were kids in school, the population hovered around 20,000 at times.  Now they are lucky if they can say that there are 12,000 residents.  Many of the refinery employees make the 50 mile commute from Amarillo every day to work. No commute for...

It is the last few days of June 2016 and with almost a week under our belts in Highland Village's Pilot Knoll Park  it is time to move north.  There is not a whole lot of things we are interested in doing between Dallas and Borger when daytime highs are breaking 110 degrees.  If the weather were cooler we would stop in at Caprock Canyons State Park or Palo Duro Canyon State Park, beautiful places when the temperature is somewhere below a pizza oven.  July in the panhandle of Texas is a time to seek out things to do that minimize your time outdoors.  We are going to be spending time with family and friends as well as a 4th of July gathering. Sticking with our strategy to minimize our risk for trailer tire failure we are getting out early and picking a layover town that gets us off the road by mid-day.  Doing this puts us in the tiny, dusty town of Vernon, TX.  Like many Texas towns it has a nice campground for a night's layover.  I think it is gr...