July 4th 2014 Weekend

The July 4th weekend has come to an end and we had a nice time.  On the 4th we started by visiting our friend, Priscilla, and her enormous mob of family at her home.  She must have had 30 family from out of town visiting for the weekend.  The small children enjoyed her beautiful pool.  We enjoyed some good food and then moved onto a fellowship our Sunday School class was having our one of their homes.  They have a beautiful home out in the country (kind of) with a very large back yard that backs up to a dirt field.  So this made it very conducive to having fireworks shot off.  One of the class members brought an enormous amount of fireworks with him and put on a very nice display for all of us to enjoy.

April

Bailey

On Saturday we took a day trip to the Great Salt Plains State Park in Oklahoma.  This place is really neat to see and hard to believe it is in Oklahoma.  We took the girls and the jeep and headed NW for 2 1/2 hours to Jet, OK.  On the east side of the park is where you can access the lake and camping areas.  There is quite a large dam and spillway there as well as some equestrian camping areas and trails.

 We found a small but nice camping area that would handle our rig that sits right on the river below the spillway.  It was very nice and we will probably spend some time there when it's cooler.  It would be fun to go out and dig for the selenite crystals.  http://www.fws.gov/refuge/salt_plains/visit/dig.html 

In order to get to the crystal digging area we had to head back south to Jet then west for a few miles to go up the west side of the lake and salt plains area.  By this time it was lunchtime and the only place we could find for food was Cadillac Jacks Cafe in Jet.  Since we had the girls, John went in and got food to go while I kept the girls cool in the car.  They actually had very good greasy spoon cheeseburgers.  

As you can see from the picture of John in the vast white area, this salt plain covers an expansive area. The picture of what looks like a road is just that.  You have to drive where directed to the dig areas which are rotated all the time.  There is apparently quick sand under all this so you really don't want to end up in that!  The crystals are always forming to that is why the dig areas are rotated.  The web site I listed tells you how to dig for them but you hit water no more than 2' down.  We had a great day and look forward to heading there to spend more time.  Only about 45 miles SW of this area are the sand dunes so we hope to check those out in the jeep as well and see if we can do some 4-wheeling!