So we rolled out of the house on July 4 for the annual trek to Okemah. We had to wait until my wife and daughter finished their shifts at work, though, and agreed to give it a little time and rolled out at 4PM (we wound up making it 3:30). Straight out, it's a 7 hour drive (6 if you push it, but because of the number of police on the roads for the holiday weekend, it would have been a horrible idea to push it).
I led in the van, my daughter followed in the Acura, which probably saved me a half dozen speeding tickets because of the aforementioned increased police presence. I had purposed, as it was a Friday night, to see if there was picking available at the Harris Drugstore in Pampa. There was, so I stopped and played three songs (I held it to three, reminding myself this was a BREAK!)
As we were heading out, my daughter saw a picture on the counter: me, June Thomas, and Sam Doores (would have been 2007). Since June has passed on and Sam's career has taken him to bigger and better things, it was fun to see a picture from the "wayback" machine (she snapped it from her iPhone; when we get reliable Internet, I will share it).
We made more stops than I had hoped to; I wanted to make sure my daughter was OK in the car, and when we cleared OKC, we knew we were an hour away. I had debated pulling over for the night, but none of us was particularly keen on sleeping in the vehicles.
We arrived in at 2AM to an empty campground. Nobody, we even beat in the traditional early arrivals. We tossed around whether to set up the tent or sleep in the vehicles; the tent won. We broke a connector, but were able to tape it up and hope to order another for the manufacturer. I wasn't going to wrestle to get mattresses out, so we took the bedding out and called it good.
We awoke to two distant neighbors, who had rolled in in the wee hours of the morning. It's gonna be a great year, as usual.
No comments:
Post a Comment