Apr 2008

We decide that we need a day to catch up on bills, emails, schoolwork, etc so we decide to spend another day in Oklahoma City. This campground has great wifi, a hot tub and cable TV so it's a great place for just hanging out for a day.

By late afternoon we have all of our chores done and head to downtown Oklahoma City. We visit Centennial Park, with the sculptures commemorating the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1899,

and then hop on a trolley to ride around town and stop at the Oklahoma National Memorial Site, which remembers the 168 lives lost when the Federal building was bombed.

We get off the trolley near their very nice baseball park, Bricktown Stadium, home of the Texas Rangers AAA team.

For those who don't know, Jere is a long time Cincinnati Reds fan, starting in the 60s before the Big Red Machine. One of the best known players of the Big Red Machine is Johnny Bench and apparently Johnny Bench was born in Oklahoma City and grew up in Oklahoma, so they have Johnny Bench Plaza at the entrance of the stadium. Of course we take time to look at his plaza. The plaza includes one of the many decorated buffalo sculptures (this one is supposed to represent the many different pathways that buffalo once roamed) we saw scattered around downtown OKC.

Then we walk back to Bass Pro Shop (where we parked our truck) along the Olahoma City riverwalk.

We get back to the RV park in time for a quick swim in their indoor pool.

We drive about two hours and 'set up camp' at the Rockwell RV Park on the western edge of Oklahoma City. It's an older park, but reasonably priced, indoor pool, nice restrooms, free coffee and muffins in the morning and a nice surprise -- free and fast WIFI.

We have lunch and head to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. We spend the afternoon learning everything you ever wanted to know about cowboys and Western art. The museum not only includes everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about cowboys (history, rodeos, television and movies, etc) but has wonderful exhibits on Western (United States) art. Photography in the art exhibits is not permitted so no pics from that section of the museum.

The impressive "End of the Trail" sculpture is in the lobby:

Joe with Roy Rogers and John Wayne stand-ups:

We come back to the RV for dinner, and make a Wal-Mart run for groceries and other miscellaneous supplies. I was hoping for a large grocery store, but the Wal-Mart is so close. I am not a fan of grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, but they always seem to be at convenient locations on this trip.

We get some exercise at the indoor pool (with large, tacky, plastic palm trees) in the evening and call it a day.

Long day of driving today. We drive the 50 mile long Talimena Scenic parkway: curvy road with some steep grades along the ridge of the Kiachima Mountain range. Our Ford pick-up truck gets a work out today with the steep hills.

We stop often along the drive to look at scenery and read the many roadside signs.

We drive for several hours past the Talimena Drive to Prague, Oklahoma and stop at the Catfish Round-up RV park for the night. They have cheap campsites and a restaurant that reportedly serves the best fried catfish in Oklahoma and at very reasonable prices. Our dinner is wonderful – fried catfish, warm apple fritters, warm dinner rolls and hush puppies; and very friendly servers (who keep asking if you want more apple fritters—I stopped myself at two, but it was very tempting to have more).

As we eat breakfast, we look out the window and see this large truck pulling a large 5th wheel trailer pulling a jeep! I think it's the longest, largest rig that I've ever seen!

We decide to take a slight detour in our trip and try our luck at diamond mining at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. It’s about a two hour drive from Hot Springs so we’re there by lunchtime.

This is the 8th largest diamond deposit in the world and the only place where you can mine diamonds and keep whatever you find. We realize we probably won’t find any diamonds but we’ve heard it’s a lot of fun, and definitely something different. The diamonds are strewn across a large ‘field’ of plowed dirt within the state park.

We pay our entrance fee of $6.50 each, watch the video & read the information boards about diamonds,

rent some equipment (shovel, bucket, screens), and head out to the field to get rich.

They find an average of two diamonds per day here, and yesterday they found three. We pick our spot, dig up some dirt and then start looking for our diamonds.

Several hours later we are diamondless. I decide to switch spots in the field and look for amethyst instead. I do find some amethyst, but still no diamonds. Oh well, no one else is finding diamonds either. Then around 4:00pm a woman less than 20 feet away from me looks down at the path (that Joe and I had just walked on) and picks up a 1.2 carat brown diamond. We were so close!

We stay til they close at 5pm and then walk back to the campground. No diamonds, but an interesting and fun day.

We leave Petit Jean State Park, drive two hours through the rural Arkansas countryside and arrive at the Hot Springs KOA. Nice campground, so we set up, have lunch and then head over to Hot Springs. We stroll down the main street past Bath House Row and visit the National Park Visitors Center. We watch their movie and tour the visitors center.

Bath House Row:

Visitors Center:

Quapaw Bathhouse is be refurbished by National Park service and will open this summer:

Visitors Center refurbished men's bath:

Visitors Center refurbished solarium:

We walk to the end of bath house row to see the hot springs where the hot water which feeds the bathhouses originates. The water comes out of the ground at 143 degrees fahrenheit:

This is a very unusual National Park. Truthfully, I don't think it deserves to be a National Park. I guess the government bought these bathhouses years ago and didn't know what to do with them so they made them a National Park. The Visitors Center is a refurbished bath house. At best this 'park' should be a U.S. Historical Park. Anyway, we walk around the bath house area, drive around the loop behind the bathhouses and then return to the campground for the rest of the afternoon. We enjoy the pool at the campground and relax.

This was an interesting stop today, but I am perplexed as to why this row of bathhouses is a national park.