Westward Bound: Westward Bound: Day 15-16, May 19-20, 2013, Traveling to Foss State Park, Foss, Oklahoma

Note: I apologize for this coming so many days after we were here. We have been without consistent internet for several days. Since these days, we have been to Santa Rosa and Sante Fe, New Mexico and are now in Mesa Verde National Park, in Colorado. So I am two blogs behind even as I complete this one. Yikes! As you can imagine, there are boatloads of pictures to cull through from our visit to Mesa Verde. Hopefully, it won't be long before I can upload those blogs as well.

On to Foss Park State Park, Arkansas

Our first stop on the way to Foss State Park, in Oklahoma, was Fort Smith, Arkansas, to visit the National Park Visitor's Center. It was a quiet and beautiful Sunday as we passed through this lovely memorial. Richard made sure to add one more stamp in our National Park passbook.

Crossing the Oklahoma state line, we noticed the geography changing to more flatlands and yep, the wind started picking up. We had left early that morning, hoping to cross over the state before the predicted, ominous tornado threats became a reality.

Although cloudy and windy as we traveled through Oklahoma, we were fortunate to be just ahead of the predicted "ideal conditions" for severe tornados that eventually hit Oklahoma City on Saturday and Sunday. We passed the area along I-40 that was hit on Saturday by a scant hour or so. Whew!

By the time we were encamped at Foss State Park, NW of Clinton (see below), we were in an area of blue skies and we found that our waterfront campsite was beautifully shaded. Sitting in such tranquil beauty, it was so surreal to watch the news of such devastation in the very area we had just left.

As you can imagine, muh of our time at Foss Park was spent glued to the TV, worrying about the victims.

The view from our campsite and two of the flock of geese that occasionally wandered by.

The sunset on the lake.

Shown above are some of the discoveries from our morning walk. We never did figure out the contraption made from a tire.

The trees are much smaller and definitely show signs of the continuous winds. I was quite taken with this cluster of trees with picnic tables tucked within its' bower.

We were very excited to see this roadrunner!

After our walk, we hopped in the truck and headed out to cross over the dam and check out the other side of this enormous park.

Although hard to see, on the ride side of the road across the dam, a herd of buffalo was grazing.

We took this zoomed in picture of our campsite from atop the dam. Our camper is one of three tucked into the trees on the far left of the bank. You can barely see them! Such a peaceful, beautiful area. Hard to believe just one hour away, Moore, OK. was about to be ravaged by the F5 tornado (day 2 of tornados).

Following our walk and drive throughout the state park, we headed in to explore Elk City, OK. This small city is a real cowboy and rodeo town and has a really neat museum area that celebrates the local history. We were intrigued to find that we were on Route 66. This brought back memories of the TV show we enjoyed back in the 60's. There were also lots of signs that led us to the Route 66 Museum that was attached to the local cultural museum.

The culture of the area was captured so well with the metal sculptures.

I loved the Christmas tree made of old horseshoes

My late brother, Mike, would have loved this display. There were four wall of nothing but Popeye memorabilia.

Seeing this quilt made me wish, all the more, that we had Shelley here with us,

Check out this hand tooled leather. These are part of a very large set of luggage for the wife of one of the famous Bueller Brothers, who were rodeo icons from Elk City. The wives of the brothers performed bareback riding and other rodeo acts. The Bueller Family was honored with two rooms of memorabilia from several generations of rodeing.