Goal: Hotchatown State Park, Oklahoma
We break camp at 10:30 AM and say good-bye to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Today’s drive should be around 130 miles. This should be an easy day of driving for Rob.
Our goal is Hochatown State Park on Broken Bow lake in Oklahoma. This is another of the United States “fractal” lakes, as our friend Steve Jeffereys titled them. They are lakes which are the result of damming a river to control flooding, and provide a recreation area. The resulting lake looks like a mathematical fractal drawing with random jagged edges.
We drove along on US 70 passing lots of farming. Pig, beef, poultry, and trees for paper. It was a lovely day, and a nice 2 lane road with light traffic.
We arrive in the town of Broken Bow, which is in the Choctaw Nation, about two and a half hours later. We stop at an EZ Mart to fill up Clyde with diesel at the low price of $3.28 per gallon. Clyde took 13 gallons and had averaged 10 mpg on the drive. We noted while waiting our turn at the pump, a number of hunters were filling up their ATVs, in addition to their trucks. Guess it is hunting season!
Broken Bow appears to be a nice small town with an active commercial area.
We drive the remaining 10 miles up to the campground in the Hochatown State Park. Hochatown is run jointly with the Beavers Bend State Park. You can look the two parks up here on the Oklahoma State Parks website. The road into the park is two miles long. The road is paved, but has no shoulder, and curves up and down as well as side to side. Since we were the only vehicles on the road, Rob just drove slowly and we had no problems getting to the park.
The park has plenty of signs, and where we needed to go was well marked. We are looking for Turkey Loop. Yep found that. Now Site 5. The road around the loop was narrow, but is luckily one way, so we were reasonably sure we would not encounter someone driving towards us on the single lane leading to our site.
Our site is nice, BUT the entrance is guarded by large trees. Rob and I get out of the truck and study the site, the road, and the entry between the trees from the road.
After a few minutes of discussion about how Rob is going to navigate the approach, and Deryl understands how to help guide him into our site. As it turns out there was about a foot between the passenger side of the trailer and the tree on that side. Then there was two feet between a pair of trees that the truck had to avoid as it swung the trailer into the site from the road.
Another improvement on the technology side: Deryl and Rob had purchased Apple AirPods just before leaving New Hampshire. Today was a perfect use of them. Deryl takes her AirPod ear buds out of their case, and the AirPods connect to her iPhone. Deryl then puts her AirPods into her ears and proceeds to call Rob on his iPhone. In turn his iPhone uses a bluetooth connection to the truck’s speaker system for Rob to have hands on conversation. Now Deryl has both her hands available to point, wave, and motion to stop, so Rob has visual information in his mirrors. Deryl also can be talking about things like, “you have 2 feet here on the driver’s side” or “hang on, I need to go check the other side”. And Rob can hear what she is doing rather than have to have a thousand strange hand signals. This means that hand signals can be simple. Forward, Getting close, A little closer, Left, Right, and the all important Stop. As a result, the AirPods facilitated our ability to get the truck and trailer safely into our site.
The site is reasonably level, but does require us to raise the right side of the trailer with leveling blocks. After Duck Puddle we now carry plenty of two different kinds, as well as a variety of boards, to help us when we encounter a site that is not level. We layout the leveling blocks and assemble them similarly to Lego Blocks, to form a stepped platform for the trailer tires to climb upon. Rob backs up the trailer, and Deryl slides the assembly under the low side where we want the trailer tires to be. Rob then gently pulls the trailer forward, and it climbs up the steps and onto the platform in one easy motion!
At this point Rob takes his AirPods out of their case, and they connect to his iPhone, he then puts his AirPods in to his ears, and the phone call disconnects from the truck to the tiny speakers in his ears. This now allows Deryl and Rob to walk around the trailer doing the various tasks involved in docking the trailer. For example: Deryl can ask “Rob may I open the Bedroom slide?” The bedroom slide is right over the wet bay where Rob might be working on hooking up the water hose, so better to check than have Rob encounter the edge of the bedroom slide.
Thirty minutes later the cats are in the trailer having their dinner, and we are sitting outside having Quarantinies! Ah… What a lovely sunny, warm day to sit outside, in our easy chairs.
Dinner:
As we are relaxing, the topic of what to do this evening reaches the top of the discussion list.
On the drive up to the campground we passed a number of other RV parks, some tourist merchandise shops, and a few restaurants. There were two places we considered. The first was a seafood place, the other a Saloon. Deryl has enough bars of cellular service to check out the menus. After reading the menus, we decide the Saloon is the correct choice, as it will have music tonight!
We take showers, change in to “going to town” clothes, and head back to the highway, and south the mile to the Hochatown Saloon.
The saloon, is a large facility, and obviously VERY popular. Even on a dark and unfamiliar road, we have no problem finding the place. The outside of the building is well lit and the parking lot has lots of vehicles; Cars, trucks, ATVs, and motorcycles. We park Clyde amongst a number of other pick up trucks.
As you enter the building, you are greeted at the hostess station, where the friendly staff are helping seat people. There is a large party of 16 waiting for a table before us, and a few more people milling around. The couple before us are a party of 2, and are told that it will be a half hour for a table. When it our turn, we inquire if there is seating available at the bar. “Why certainly, help yerselves.”
The bar is a large wooden Peninsula under a second level deck, with high chairs all around the outside. Lots of people can be seated around this bar. We approach and a couple invites us to use the two chairs next to them.
Brandy and her husband Wesley quickly become our newest-old friends! They live in Hochatown, and enjoy the area. They own a business building log homes for people in the area. Many of the homes they build are seasonal homes, and a few are year round homes. Over the evening we learn a great deal about them and about the area. Brandy even shared this picture of she and her husband Wesley.
The Hochatown Saloon has a good sized menu with a number of attractive items listed. Rob elects the grilled shrimp dinner, and Deryl orders tonight’s special: beef street tacos.
We try some local Oklahoma bourbon. Rob’s house salad with blue cheese dressing arrives, and it is a mix of baby lettuces, cheddar jack cheese, croutons, grape tomatoes, cucumber slices, red onion slices, radish slices, and hard boiled egg crumbles, to which he added the blue cheese dressing.
We finish Rob’s salad and our orders arrive. Rob’s grilled shrimp were obviously cooked over a wood fired grill, he accompanied it with the french fries. The fries were newly fried from fresh potatoes, not frozen ones, and they are lightly salted.
Deryl’s street tacos are in fresh soft corn tacos. The beef had been long slow cooked till it was able to be shredded, then grilled to reheat so that it had a lovely light crunch. There was shredded cheddar, a little shredded lettuce, and some fresh pico-de-gallo on top of the beef.
Both meals were delicious and we would go back again. We pass more time talking with Brandy and Wesley before the music starts up at 10:00 PM. The saloon has a nice sound system and we look forward to listening to the music.
At 9:30 the bouncers come by and request our chairs. The need to clear the entire dance floor, all the way to the bar, for when the music starts.
As the music starts up, so does an amazing club light show! A variety of moving lights, fog machines, and lasers! As the lights put on a wonderful show on the floor and ceiling of the saloon, people start dancing! In a short time the whole place is rocking!
We end up staying out at the Saloon until 11:30 PM when we realize that we need to drive tomorrow. We exchange contact information with Brandy and Wesley, and head back to camp.
The cats are happy we are finally home as they are tired of waiting up for us before they can go to bed.