Been busy busy busy

While in Muskogee we visited the Three Rivers Museum and the USS Batfish, a WWII sub that has retired to an inland resting location.

Wes & Tonia put on a MAJOR crab boil...crab, shrimp, taters, corn, bratwursts, on & on......I can't remember eating crab legs before but they were good!

We went to Muskogee where the first recorded sales of Gild Scout cookies is documented.

Here we are having a snack & a drink or two.

This is the Cherokee National Courthouse.

We have been busy this week. Jeff's truck is experiencing problems so it's in the Ford garage. We have spent time driving around Tenkiller Lake and the dam. Had some good BBQ at the Smokehouse and Fishs. We went to Sam & Ella's Chicken Palace for pizza and Fishs for BBQ. Go figure. We spent a day in Muskogee at a museum and the USS Batfish WWII memorial. We all had a free lunch at KFC thanks to Ophra. Today we did some shopping and went to Wes & Tonia's for a crab boil. I enjoyed the crab, first time I've ate it!

The weather is breaking, we see the sun everyday, not much rain and the lake is not rising much.

Cookson, OK Chicken Creek COE Park

We had a fun Thursday night, a major thunderstorm woke us up at 3am Friday morning so we turned on the weather radio for the county we were in. The darn thing went off at 4am....severe weather alert, 5am.....heavy rain & hail alert, 6am....strong winds alert, 7am....flood warning alert. Cripe, not sure I want to use this thing at night if we can't get any sleep. The lake in now less than 100' from us. Friday & Saturday Judy went to Curves and we tried to stay dry, the lake is 75' from us.

Sunday we were up early (Judy couldn't sleep so she read from 3 to 6am) and we were on the road at 9:15. The lake was less than 50' from us. We made the 115 mile drive and arrived at Chicken Creek at 11:45. We avoided the scenic drive along the Illinois River due to flooding concerns. Jeff & Susan arrived about 4pm and set up camp. Wes & Tonia were here about 4pm so we had a nice chat before the Collingwoods arrived. Wes brought us our mail, THANKS Wes!! After they had set up the six of us went to Sam & Ellas Chicken Palace in Tahlequah for some GOOD pizza. I tried the Internet and it's working great tonight, this afternoon it told me that Sprint had no data service in this area??? It's been misting all day, hope we see the sun soon.

Bears Den, Grove, Oklahoma

Today we made the short 120 mile pull from Chanute to Grove, OK. We stayed here last fall for several days, it's a free membership park on the Grand Lake. We were rained on while traveling but not while in Grove, yet. Wonder what this place is like in the summer? I'll take it the way it is now, peaceful & quiet. Our neighbors are a nice mallard couple.

Chanute, NuWa & local exploration

We are still in Chanute. We have been socializing with fellow HitchHiker owners here at the city park. It varies from 2 to half a dozed HitchHikers. I have met two forum members here, Mallo & GlenH. It's nice to actually meet in person someone you have communicated with on the Internet users forum.

We took our HH into the factory service Monday morning EARLY in the RAIN. We were up before 6, broke camp in heavy rain and were at the plant at 7:10. We then went exploring, we visited one of Laura Ingle's houses on the prairie. In addition to the house is a log cabin, small post office & one room school house. We then went to see the "yellow brick road" and Emmit Kelly (the clown) museum. Ha Ha Ha......although the Kansas map and tourist book have both identified we couldn't find any "yellow brick road" (perhaps it blew away with Dorothy & Toto) and the Emmit Kelly museum looked like the last visitor was 25 years ago, then it closed. But as you can see, Judy did find the tin man. We did have a nice drive through the flint hills of Kansas. We spent Monday night in a motel and picked up our home at 2pm Tuesday & returned to the city park. Tuesday morning we toured the NuWa plant. They shut down production in January, are revamping production, service & parts and will resume production in June. About a dozen RV manufacturers (very large ones too!) have gone out of business within the past year due to the economy so we are excited that NuWa didn't join them. We were going to leave today but the weather is bad so we'll stay put & depart for Oklahoma tomorrow. Judy is busy oiling the wood work, I get to do the high parts.

Today we made the 270 mile run from Mountain View, MO to Chanute, KS. Man was it windy, hitting us broadside most of the way. Between the hills and strong headwind mileage dropped from 10.5 to 8.6 mpg. The last 35 miles was northward so we had a tail wind that almost blew us through Kansas into Nebraska. You can see the trees behind us in the above pictures blowing to the right. Judy was surfing the net and found there was a free Martin & Osa Johnson movie at the community college so we spent a couple hours there this evening. The high school girls were playing softball beside the CG so we had some action there too. We'll probably participate in more of the weekends Johnson activities.

Mountain View, MO

Today we made a casual drive (4 hours, 200 miles) from AK to MO. We took the back roads into the Ozarks so the truck was having some fun on the big hills, can't call them mountains. We are back to early spring, the trees are just starting to leaf out but it is 83 degrees at 2:30. We saw our first lilacs, lots of iris are in full bloom the last few days.

Beale Street, BBQ & ghosts

This is the campground laundry room....do you think the Mississippi River floods here? We thought this baby tugboat & barge was cute.

In the evening we did a one mile walking ghost tour in Memphis. Judy enjoyed the one in Nashville last year but this one wasn't as good. It was a very pleaseant evening and even I enjoyed the casual walk through downtown. You are right, we didn't see any ghosts. We did see the trolly cars and went for a ride.

We went to a well known BBQ joint, Interstate BBQ, in Memphis for dinner. Judy, the BBQ nut, said it was very good, better that the place on the FL/AL line. It was good and we both agree when passing through Memphis in the future we'll stop at Tom Sawyers CG & Interstate BBQ. After dinner we went to Beale Street, the home of blues & rock & roll so it says. We parked out butts in a nice little outdoor bar and listened to the music on Beale Street. On Wednesday evenings it's bike night and there were LOTS of 'em as you can see.

Congradulations to Ron & Lois, they sent me an email with Elvis' middle name!!