6/16/2013–Anthony, KS to Colby, KS

We left Anthony Lake on Sunday morning going north for a short distance, then taking a road to the west through Attica and then Sharon, KS.  I wasn’t quick enough with the camera, but as we approached Sharon, I spotted a sign that said it was the home of Martina McBride.

We made a short stop off the road in Kiowa City, KS by this interesting sign for Hotel Lothman.  There was even a sheriff parked there when we pulled in, but he left soon after that.

We crossed an intersection in Mullinville, KS where there was a sign forest for about a quarter mile or so.  Apparently the owner of the property had a statement to make.

We eventually landed in Colby, KS for the night where we stayed at the Thomas County Fairgrounds.  It was all back-in sites, but the let us stay hooked up and parked alongside several.  There were only two other RV’s there for the night.

The weather radio warned us of an approaching storm.

We had a lot of heavy rain and winds, but the worst of it split and went north and south of us thankfully.

Other than the storm, we spent a quiet relaxing evening in the RV.

6/13–6/15/2013–Anthony, Kansas

We left the campground at Chickasha, OK on the morning of 6/13 headed to our destination of Anthony, Kansas.

We hope not to ever do business with JoeBob.

This was one of many murals we saw painted on the sides of buildings in route.

We drove through El Reno, OK where a tornado on gone through about a week after the Moore, OK tornado.  We noticed a lot of roof damage as well as piles of roofing and other materials along the sides of the highway.

This statue was on a corner in the town of Kingfisher, OK.  As we entered the city limits, I saw a sign indicating it was the birthplace of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart.

Once we crossed the Kansas border, it was just a few short miles to our destination of Anthony.

I took this photo of our site once we got hooked up and ready to leave in the morning.  It’s at a very large city park on Anthony Lake.

This area has been hit hard by the drought and this is what’s left of Anthony Lake.  The houses shown are lakefront properties and although it can’t really be seen here, most of them have docks in front of their houses.  When we arrived, we talked to a man who was doing the mowing and he said the lake was pretty well dried up since last year.  That probably explains why there was only one other RVer besides us camped here during our stay.

The remainder of the photos were taken at the Anthony Museum which we toured this morning.  One of the volunteers there today took time to give us a personal tour and she was very knowledgeable having been working there for 27 years!  Most of their exhibits have been donated and some are on loan.  It was quite an impressive collection.

We returned to the RV for the afternoon to just relax and make some preparations for our trip tomorrow.

6/12/2013–Wylie, TX to Chickasha, OK

We left the East Fork COE campground on the morning of 6/12/2013.  We decided to take the back roads to Hwy 380 and avoid the narrow curving roads.  We first took the road behind the Walmart in Wylie where there were some trucks delivering more pipes for the masssive water project extending from Lake Texoma to Lake Lavon.

We drove east on Hwy 380 to I-35 and turned north toward Oklahoma.

We crossed the Red River at the Texas/Oklahoma border.

And arrived in Oklahoma.

We took an exit south of the recent tornado ravaged city of Moore, OK and continued to Chickasha where we spent the night at a Passport America campground.  It was a small, but nice park.  There was an Elks lodge in town, but we preferred 50amp electric hookups with the temperatures in the 90’s.  We did drive to the lodge though and enjoyed a spaghetti dinner before returning to the RV for the night.

6/8/2013–McKenna’s Graduation Day

McKenna’s graduation from Wylie East High School was held at the Allen Event Center, a very large venue and it was impossible to get any decent photos of the stage area.

McKenna entered the arena just below where we were seated so this was one of the better photos of the ceremony.

Her name is called and she walks across the stage to receive her diploma.

We are very proud of McKenna as she graduated with honors in the top 10% of her class (#16 out of about 320 students).  She has already been accepted in the honors program at Texas Tech in Lubbock, TX.

After the ceremony, McKenna poses with Kendall, Chris and Laurie.

Chris and Laurie held a graduation party in their backyard with food prepared by Chef George and desserts by his wife Katie.

Demetrius, Laura, and Butch.

Butch and his daughter Bailie.  She’ll be graduating next year in Cheyenne, WY.

Chris and Kendall

The graduation cake.

Needless to say, we all stuffed ourselves and had a nice visit with the family.  Congratulations to McKenna on all your achievements!

6/5–6/7/2013–Wylie, TX and The Dallas Aquarium

I posted a photo of McKenna a few days ago and now here is our son Chris with his wife Laurie and our younger granddaughter Kendall.

On the 7th, Laura and Demetrius (daughter and grandson from Spokane) needed a ride to downtown Dallas so they could pick up a rental car.  While we waited for the car to get there, we went out to lunch, then wandered around the outside area of the Dallas aquarium looking at the animal exhibits.

This is a Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo eating corn on the cob.

And this is a Shoebill Stork.

Laura was finally able to pick up the rental car and we headed back to Wylie to visit with the rest of the family for the evening.

6/3–6/4/2013 The Graduate and Friends in Van Alstyne, TX

We spent some time on Monday afternoon with our granddaughter McKenna who will be graduating in a few days.  We are very proud of her for what she’s accomplished in her young life and for her strong beliefs.  She is well on her way to doing very well in life.

After our visit with McKenna, we decided to check out some possible places for family tours later this week.  We never watched the tv show Dallas in the 70’s, but a few short miles from Chris and Laurie’s house is the Southfork Ranch which is the site of that tv show.  We walked through the gift shop/visitor center and picked up a coupon for a discount on a tour if we should decide to go through there later.

Back at the RV, there were three blossoms on my transplanted cactus.  Okay…I know I’m bringing this up too much, but I don’t have a green thumb and it should have died by now.

I was out on my walk before sunrise this morning and tried to catch it with my cell phone camera, but it doesn’t do it justice.

And then this afternoon, we drove up to Van Alstyne to see our friends Terry and Sylvia and our favorite little white dog Keeper.  Keeper is showing his age, but he seemed pretty happy to see us and we were happy to see him too!

And of course we had an enjoyable visit with Sylvia and Terry too!  Terry’s sister Brenda runs the Durning House in Van Alstyne and we had lunch there for Bubba Tuesday.  The chicken fried chicken lunch was the best we’ve had!

Sylvia and Terry.

We said our goodbyes and drove back to Wylie on the backroads to avoid heavy traffic.  I didn’t get a very good photo, but this cowboy limousine pulled out in front of us and we followed it for a while before it turned off on a side road.

We arrived back at camp for another quiet evening.

6/2/2013–Spring Branch to Wylie, TX

We kept busy for the last week or so making our preparations to leave our property in Spring Branch, TX.  We had a real estate agent come out to discuss listing our property, and we decided that it would be in our best interest to continue to update the ad on Craigslist and on various RV forums.

The evening before we left, we even had a tarantula travel through our driveway to wish us safe travels.

All hooked up and ready to hit the road in the morning.

Since we were traveling on a Sunday, Ken decided to follow GPS Gertie’s routing instructions.  Rather than taking our usual route north on 281 to Burnet, we took a route east through Austin.

Once we made it through Austin, we continued north on I-35 passing this building that looked like an alien spaceship.

We continued on through Dallas, and before going to the COE campground in Wylie, we stopped at Walmart to fill the fuel tank at $3.39 per gallon.

The cactus that I took from our property had two blossoms when we arrived at our site.

And here we are set up our site for the next 10 days.  Lake Lavon is in the background (middle left of photo).

We are here for our granddaughter’s graduation next Saturday.  It probably won’t last, but we did have a cooler evening for sleeping last night.