Another state today.....

Our Location:  Walmart, Elk City, Oklahoma

We woke to sunny skies in Hereford this morning, but frosty temps for certain, close to the freezing mark. A quick breakfast, we were packed up and finished dumping our tanks, saying our goodbyes to Alison & Ellie around 8:30 am. We were out of Hereford before 9 AM, motoring along on US 60 East once again. 

US 60 East in Texas.

 

It was an uneventful day, we ventured through a number of towns before we passed through Amarillo, Texas and connected to I-40 East which we will travel for the next couple of days. The sky was filled with white fluffy clouds and a bit of sun here and there but the temperatures were warming up and we managed to reach about 60F/ 15.5 C this afternoon when we stopped for the night.
 

We noticed this bird covered big Texan along the roadway.

 

We passed into Oklahoma right around the noon hour and pulled in at the Welcome Center not long afterwards. The nice lady there was helpful when I mentioned I was looking for the park in Elk City. With a map in hand and a few written directions we headed on down the interstate to the park. We found it easily enough but all the spots were taken and with no where else to park we fell back to our trusty Walmart stops. Inside to ask if it was okay to park, assured it was and so we headed back to the Dogsled. However the lot wasn’t very level and this lovely new Hobby Lobby is right beside the Walmart, it has a wonderfully flat area away from the store and not really in their main parking lot and so we pulled in here for the night and will be on our way tomorrow morning. 

 

So green as we look out over the vast flat lands in the Texas Panhandle.

 

A walk or two around Walmart and we were home for the rest of the day. Not too exciting but it worked for us. A call to my dad after we arrived just to let him know we were off the road and after that it was a reading kind of day. I know it wasn’t a long day’s drive but it was enough for me and I didn’t want to go anywhere after we arrived even through we are close to a few interesting things. We have plenty of time stop and sight see when we get to Natural Falls in a couple of days. Now I just want to be off the road and getting ready for another day’s travel.

 

Still leaning....

So there you have it folks. I think it might be a bit noisy here as we are pretty close to the interstate and Walmart is open 24 hours, but that’s okay, it’s one night and we’ll be moving on tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by, I hope you all had a wonderful day.
 

We will be in this state for a while now.

 

Take care, be safe, 

Out our door tonight.

 

 

 

Deb

 

 

 

 

 

Hail, thunder, rain, and lightning...a flat tire too....

Our Location:  Hereford Aquatic Center, Hereford, Texas

No blog yesterday so I’ll do one big one tonight. Friday was a sort of quiet day, we did a fuel run (forgot to take the camera so no photos of that), a few groceries and found a First National Bank with an international ATM. Back home we enjoyed the rest of the afternoon just puttering around and doing a few little things. 

 

It was dark over there, the water was a dark green colour.

 

Well that is until I noticed one of the trailer tires looked a bit slack. Sure enough down to 40 pounds. Looking around I noticed a nail head sticking out of the tread. I was not impressed. Alison offered to remove the tire for me (she had also taken a nail out of one of her tires here the day we arrived) for me on Saturday (the next morning). 

 

A bright spot among the darkness.

Looking at the sky and checking the weather we were in the path of a severe line of thunderstorms moving at about 50 miles an hour through the area. We found a place here we could take refuge if necessary, pulled in the big slide and hooked up the truck due to the extreme winds that we were expecting. Soon the hail came, started off small, like the eraser on the end of a pencil, ending up about the size of a marble. It went on and on and on and on and on. Eventually it turned to rain and eventually stopped but for a couple of hours it was an ugly night here. A fair bit of lightning and some thunder but not the big winds they were expecting.

 

It was very dark to the north of us and we thought at first it miss us.

 

A few small dents on the truck but nothing major, and I haven’t yet climbed up the ladder to look at the panels on the roof. I will when we park in Natural Falls State Park. Still this morning there was a great deal of water laying around everywhere but I didn’t see any damage. Lark (a lady from Wisconsin and a friend of Alison’s) had both of her vent covers broken by the hail but other than that we couldn’t really find any thing except a couple of small dents on the vehicles. I think we were fortunate. At one point the hail covered the grass and the pavement, like snow. 

But then this rolled right over us.

This morning dawned with bright blue skies and warmer temperatures. After coffee, Lark left, heading toward Oklahoma City for the  night before heading on home. Alison came by to take the tire off and lucky thing she did because only two of the bolts were what one would consider is tight, the rest were snug but not as tight as they should have been. With the tire off, we headed to Walmart to get it patched. They assured me it was patched and plugged but I’m not so certain.
 

It was clear then to the north.

 

Back home Alison and I put the tire back on and went around to check all of the wheels, just the one with the nail was questionable, the others were all fine, very tight. So I’m not sure why that would be but I’m going to keep an eye on it for certain. 

After things settled down, it started to clear up.

 

After that I helped Alison with a couple little things, we chatted for a couple of hours discussing many things. Finally we parted ways and I came home to have some lunch, Riley and I spent the rest of the day doing a few puttering things. 

Blurry but you get the idea.

 

I chatted with my buddy Ron, we’ll be meeting up with him and his lovely wife Sharon on Tuesday. We are looking forward to that, it’s been a couple of years since we’ve seen them. 

Still raining but you can see the hail stones washed into piles. That isn't white stones, it's hail.

 

So the day is winding down and tomorrow we are off to Elk City, OK. One step closer to our week long destination. Hopefully we get no more bad weather. So that’s it, our last couple of days. 

 

The water has heaped the hail in piles.

 

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed your visit.  

 

That's water running down the sidewalk into the pond. A accumulating in puddles in the parking lot. I didn't do any enhancing of any kind to this photo. This is how it came from the camera. If you look at the first photo in this post you can see how dry the parking lot is before the storm.

 

Until next time… take care, be safe, 

 

Deb