Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Great Day to Move, Travelogue Day, Destination = Grove, Oklahoma


On Wednesday, Mar. 14th Bill and I were awake at 7 and up at 7:30 to greet the day. The sun was just skimming the horizon on its way into the blue sky. I opened the window blinds and made our tea and coffee. Well, I wasn’t quite awake yet, obviously because I forgot to remove the depleted coffee pod from the Keurig before making my tea. Bill laughed at the face I made when I tasted my ‘cof-tea’.


Once I made a real cuppa, we sat and read comments and a couple of blogs. My daughter has written a new one so I had to read that one for sure! It brought back memories of her early ‘journalism’ days at Two Cents. We wasted no time. We had our grapefruit, made the bed and washed up. Things were closed up and we were pulling out at 9:10. The temperature is already 46F and rising to a forecast 65F. That will be really nice.
We pulled out of the Casino and there were still 6 rv's in the lot
We followed US-81N instead of going south back into El Reno and then caught the NW Expressway/OK-3 east for 14 miles. We were on the outskirts of Oklahoma City so passed many Malls. This is where I’d be shopping if we lived in the area, everything we’d need was there. Because of being alongside malls, there are a lot of stop and go points. Bill would have preferred to travel I-40 and avoided this. With that decision in the wash we kept on and followed James’ instructions for the most part.

thought of you Charlotte when I saw this
This was a different route than we’d travelled before out of the city which took us onto I-35N, a somewhat bouncy interstate, off and on for about 25 miles. Taking Exit 157 we were on OK-33E headed towards Guthrie and Tulsa. The temperature has risen by 10 lovely sunny degrees and it is 10:30 when we take this exit. Bill can relax now that we are out of that crazy city traffic.

I'm sure many of you have seen this before
It is striking, each time we see it
OK-33 is a two-lane highway but we are encountering very little traffic. This is a nice drive on a smooth highway. With the variety of highways’, we’ll travel today Bill will have fun with his regular road ratings, keeping you in the know! Diesel prices are getting better and better the further east we go. Didn’t expect that! We drove through Cushing, bouncy, bouncy but we were in a school zone so we were doing a slow 25mph anyway.
We saw quite a few of these, pumping oil in Cushing

Drumright was the next town and had some wonderful looking storefronts. The old-town look was prominent. These were nice little towns to drive through. We turned left onto OK-48 for 8 miles and then right onto OK-51E. Now, we are following the truck gps. Nice to have a choice between 2 gps’s and Google maps on my laptop. They are all different.  We didn’t go far on OK-51 before taking the ramp for US-64E/US-412E into Sand Springs.
Drumright has a pretty downtown
We crossed the huge Arkansas River but it was too hard to take pictures to do it any justice. In 14 miles we veered left onto I-244E/US-412E/US-75N oh my! Tulsa was another busy drive mainly because we were using their highway at the noon hour. Sometimes timing is everything but we weren’t about to slow down just to miss it. It was pretty straightforward and soon enough we were on the east side of the city.



It was 12:30 when we pulled off at the Flying J/Denny’s for lunch. Brunch, really because we were both craving one of their hearty breakfasts. Bill had ‘Slam’ of some kind and I had the Philly Cheesesteak Omelette both with has browns. Yum, that hit the spot and will nurture us for the whole day. It will be a small dinner meal tonight. That makes life easy. We drove over to the RV lanes and filled with diesel for $2.57/gal. Great!

Bill pulled back out onto the road again at 1:30 and we got totally turned around. It was a mess trying to get back on track but with patience and a few swear words (not at each other), we got back onto I-44E/US-412E. 


Hard Rock Hotel
featuring Alana Morrissette
We passed the exit of 69N to Chouteau and took the left lane exit onto Alternate 412 East. This is another two-lane highway and it is very familiar to us with a winding smooth road. This drive took us through Locust Grove and Rose before we jumped off at US-59N. This is yet another two-lane highway that seems to be riding pretty good. 


A very winding two-lane road

A field of deer?


We arrived at Eagle’s Landing in Grove, Ok at 4 pm. Funny that my post from last March, showed that we arrived at the park at almost exactly the same time. This wasn’t a bad day at all, even though long. We made some mis-steps which was frustrating but not damaging to the actual route. We just kept plugging away until we found the right direction.
These lights in Locust Grove are cool

These light standards were in Jay
This feels good to be in a nice park, one we are familiar with, for a two week stay. It is one of our membership parks that we can stay at for Free and we have Free wifi to boot. When we arrived, our thermometer read 66F and the sun had followed us all the way. With Broken Wing Weber and the satellite dish set up, we poured ourselves a drink.
Crossing the Sailboat Bridge in Grove, Ok
Arriving at our park

A nice improvement to the park, still an ongoing project

I took a walk around the park checking things out, as I usually do. The project they were just beginning a year ago is almost complete. This nice waterfall and rocky pond sits just outside the pool fence. Don’t catch these fish though! 

Daffodils are in full bloom
The sun's reflection on the pond makes for a pretty background
Back at the Suite, I caught up on my post. It is hard to believe that it is still so light out at 7 pm. We enjoyed the rest of our evening by catching up on prerecorded episodes on our PVR.


The roadsides were loaded with daffodils

Good night from Eagle's Landing RV Resort
Hope your day was a good one too. Thank you for stopping in. You may leave a comment if you wish.

14 comments:

  1. Glad to see you made it to your destination. I tried the back roads in Oklahoma once. Got so aggravated with all the little towns I jumped back on the toll road (I-44) and have used it since.

    Glad the weather is warming up for you. Enjoy your stay.

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    1. Thanks Doug. I didn't mind the small towns, just finding the right route out of Tulsa. Bill, was concerned about some of the low tree branches though on those winding roads so might have to find another way around the toll roads.
      The weather is going to be perfect for a couple of weeks now mid 60's and mid 70's.

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  2. You had a good travel day.
    Love the back roads when we can take them. Enjoy Eagles Landing always a great place to hang out.

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    1. Bill was keeping an eye on the low branches, might not do that route next time.
      We will enjoy the rest here in this nice park.

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  3. That is quite a travelogue, you are good! Beautiful place and for two weeks, nice! Enjoy!!

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    1. ah, thank you, it felt boring to me when I read before posting. ha ha
      thanks guys, we will put our feet up for a while, we are good at that!

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  4. Thanks for the travel notes that will be helpful if we follow your route. I have to admit I am a terrible navigator and most often just trust the GPS. That waterfall pond is a nice feature in an RV park. I bet the park is well looked after.

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    1. You're welcome, hope it helps.
      This is a really nice park with great staff. They are always cleaning up things here which means constant improvements. :)

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  5. Oklahoma City was one of my favorite stops. We stayed at an Elks Lodge there and toured the town. Beautiful ... except for those pesky tornados! Be safe and know where the concrete bathrooms are!!

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    1. Thanks for the tip Nancy. We can see the concrete shelter from our site. :)

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  6. Excellent travelogue, I enjoyed it very much. Thank you!! Getting turned around is always an experience isn't it? In the over all day, the little misplacement was just a fun little side bar, even though it didn't seem fun at the time. You'll now know for next time.

    I would love to take some of those back roads and will be checking them out on a map to see if they are going my way. Thanks again, and I look forward to reading Bill's post with the ratings.

    Enjoy your time there.

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  7. Glad you arrived at Eagle's landing in good time. Enjoy your two week stay! That would be my choice at every Park ;-D

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