Five states in a day

The route Bob and I drove from Nebraska City to Afton, Oklahoma, took us through five states in one day. The highways followed the Missouri river for quite some time and brought us from Nebraska into Iowa, then Missouri, Kansas, back into Missouri and then Oklahoma. It was a pleasant drive through rolling hills with oaks and a wide variety of deciduous trees. We were also amused as we passed lots of towns with familiar names – Miami, Pittsburg, Oregon, and Tia Juana. There are so many towns with the same name all over the country. We’ve already encountered quite a few Emersons, but no Getten City yet.

I have to give Iowa my A rating for their rest areas. They were frequent, clean, new, and each one had a different theme with lots of information.

Bob and I arrived at our RV park on the shore of the Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees in northeast Oklahoma just as they were setting up for a potluck dinner. The owners insisted we come, so we got a free dinner and enjoyed some conversation about Oklahoma and the full-time RV life.

Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees is a tremendous lake with 1,300 miles of shoreline. It is famous for fishing with many Bass tournaments throughout the year. There are also lots of blue herons, white egrets, gulls and this time of year, pelicans. It seems so odd to find what I consider “seabirds” in the middle of the country, but there they are.

We have been experiencing quite hot weather this week – about 104 today and more of the same predicted for tomorrow. Harriet’s air conditioner has been running non-stop for about ten hours today and we are so grateful. Even though it was hot we walked through the Bernice state park next door and visited their nature center that had great exhibits. I had quite the conversation there with a young girl who noticed my whale tail necklace and surmised that I wasn’t from around here.

We are off to Hot Springs, Arkansas tomorrow and will finally be able to put that last state sticker on our RV map. We will have visited all of the lower 48 in Harriet, fulfilling one of our goals when we set out in January of 2010.