It's Cold! We're Heading South!

We were lucky to have a beautiful stretch of weather in Oklahoma for Thanksgiving. We remember last year's holiday with an ice storm that shut down western Oklahoma for days, so we know what a blessing it was. We had planned to winterize the motor home while it sat empty, but the ten-day forecast showed low temperatures above freezing. So we didn't have to use that anti-freeze after all! Instead of icy roads, this year we had blue skies and warm temperatures as we left Beaver. We are noticing more and more windmill farms in western Oklahoma. We don't miss the constant wind that drives them, but we like the clean energy that they produce.

We headed back to Edmond, Oklahoma, in the car to pick up our motor home. We stayed an extra day there to do some holiday baking. Mark is getting a good arm work-out mixing up our batch of goodies.

Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Denisa's grandparents baked a huge batch of little German cookies called peppernuts. This day we made a half batch of these German treats made from molasses and spices like ginger, cinnamon, all-spice, and of course--pepper. After mixing up the thick batter, the stiff dough is rolled into snakes and cut into dime-sized pieces before it is baked. Over the years we have determined that using plastic knives and parchment paper sure makes the process easier. It took the four of us two hours to bake up a half-batch, but we felt we had done our part to keep another family tradition alive. We'll share them with our aunts and children that appreciate a spicy cookie with pepper in them.

We were humming the song, "On the Road Again" as we rolled out of Edmond to points south. Oklahoma has freezing temperatures coming, and we were glad to get the motor home out of there before it had to be winterized. That process isn't too hard for the majority of the water lines. But dealing with the refrigerator's ice maker and the water lines into our washing machine make it more difficult. Likewise, getting that pink anti-freeze rinsed properly out of those two appliances is also no fun. The threat of eating pink ice cubes, or washing clothes in pink anti-freeze is one of those things we don't mind missing out on this winter.

Our first destination south of the Oklahoma border is a Texas state park near Wichita Falls. Lake Arrowhead State Park is on a sizable lake, with nice water and electric camping sites. Where else but Texas would one expect to find an oil well in the middle of a state park? In the center of the campground is a working pump jack. The reviews we read said that the constant pumping noise was less than peaceful at the closest campsites. So we are camped a bit removed from the oil well.

The information board explains that this pump jack is pumping oil from the depth of 4,865 feet--almost a mile down. It also included a picture from 1919 of the nearby town of Burkburnett, Texas with a forest of oil wells visible from Main Street. It's interesting to us that this is where Mark's grandparents were living at about this time

An oil well is an interesting camping neighbor, but these cute little prairie dogs are more popular in this park.

They were busy eating the grass while it was still green around the park.

There are hundreds of prairie dogs in the park, and their behavior around people with cameras leads us to believe they have gotten used to being fed by visitors. There is a section of the state park with a sign that indicates this is the "prairie dog town." But many of them have moved out to the suburbs as well. We had a large group of them in our camping circle, with two mounds just a few feet from our motor home.

We listened to them bark their different warning calls as we approached, and watched them scurry into their nearby holes. The prairie dogs are not dogs at all, but rodents that dig a massive underground cave system.

As cute as they are, Mark just can't embrace them. He was raised on a ranch where they were viewed as the pests they are. Not only do the prairie dog towns rob the grass from the cattle, but their underground cavern is also a perfect lair for rattlesnakes. The holes they dig are notorious for causing a horse to stumble and fall when running across a pasture with a rider. So Mark will never be a fan of these cuddly prairie dogs.