Monday, September 16, 2013

Leaving Flaming Gorge–The Road Home

Tuesday Sept 10th, 2013 – This morning we woke up intending to hike a ‘must see’ hike at Flaming Gorge. The weather, however was not cooperating. it was raining, with nothing but dreary skies in the distance. This, coupled with  neither Fred, nor I, feeling quite up to a major hike, made our decision. We hitched up the camper and drove on down the road.

Driving along, I am writing these blogs and we are talking over the things that we have done and seen on this trip…..and the things that we are excited about and looking forward to at home. It is a blessing to have such a rich life, full of possibilities and projects.

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We stopped for the night at Boyd lake State Park, north of Denver, Colorado. It had been raining off and on during the day, and was misty rain when we got ready to leave in the morning.

Wednesday, Sept 11th – We drove with cloudy skies or rain all day. The mood seemed to match the weather……

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We stopped for the night around 6:00 pm ( we lost an hour to the time change) at Cedar Bluff State Park, Kansas – south of I 70, west of Salina. We have driven about 360 miles both yesterday and today.

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Stormy skies, wide open landscape – Cedar Bluff State Park

Thursday Sept 12th - It rained all night long, and we hitched up the camper and left in a drizzle. I noticed on the news sites that there is flash flooding in Colorado. I think that we left before the worst of the rain……though it has been steady raining on us all morning……it is hard to get excited about travel in this weather.

Another check of the news and I realized that we were lucky to have left the Denver area when we did……or we would have been in the middle of the flash flooding and torrential rains.

It finally stopped raining just before we arrived at Keystone lake State park, just west of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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We had a nice campsite right close to the lake, and were the only camper in the entire loop.

We sat out to enjoy the evening and were treated to an amazing number of these birds chirping away in the tree tops.

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Very distinctive with a very long, split tail…….

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And a coral coloring under the wing.

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We looked in our bird book and decided that they were Scissor-tail Flycatchers. A fellow camper confirmed our guess and told us that it was the Oklahoma state bird.

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They really made a lovely addition to our campsite.

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A beautiful sunset over the lake…….By the way, keystone Lake was made by damming up the Arkansas River at this point. The same river that ran through Salida,Colorado and that we will see up at Petit Jean, Arkansas.

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Friday morning, Sept 13th  - Geese on the Lake  -  quiet….peaceful…..

We are up and on the road……. eager ……heading to Petit Jean, Arkansas for the weekend. A favorite spot of ours, made more special, this stop, because Brian and Rebekah will be joining us.   : )    

After that, we will be home, again…..

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