Week 10 - Hot Springs and Oklahoma City

We finished out Hot Springs with a visit to a local winery, a long drive on a scenic byway through Ouachita National Park and attended Brickfest.   Arkansas wines are way too sweet for our taste, so we won't be shipping any of those home. Brickfest was a 3 day event with music and lots of fair type happenings.   Tractor pulls, motorcycle events, car shows, a baby contest, best dressed brick, etc.   All of it was great and we had fun interacting with the local folks who were a bit more friendly than we previously experienced.   Here are a few pictures of the events.

Winners of the baby girl competition

Winners of baby boys contest

These are dressed bricks

There was a Harley Davidson event going on in town the day before we were leaving.  There were hundreds and hundreds of motorcycles and stuff going on everywhere.









The weather never let up in Arkansas - between 94 and 100 each day.  I think we've seen every summer movie over the past 10 weeks just to get out of the heat for a bit.  Here's some things we learned on this trip thus far:
1)  We really don't need all the "stuff" we have at home to be happy;
2)  We can live happily in an 8' x 32' area and not drive each other nuts;
3)  We really live in a great country;
4)  It is really cool seeing armadillos in the wild;
5)  We still love Friday night martini nights; and
6)  We are still loving retirement!

We had an 8 hour drive to Oklahoma City and 4 of it was driving through 25 mph winds - not fun.  The temperatures were between 104 and 110 all 3 days we were there, with high 80's at night.  The winds were so bad the first and third night that the RV just kept rocking.  It was way too hot to cook so we ended up eating out every night, which gets really old for us, as we like to cook. 
Most of the activities we had planned were outdoors and we just couldn't do it.  We ended up spending a day at a local casino, which was a decent trip for both of us.  Much nicer than the ones in Tunica and we had better luck.  We also visited the zoo - yes, again, but first thing in the morning.  They had Galapagos turtles and since we are going to the Galapagos Islands in 2013, we just had to see them.

You can't go wrong seeing a baby elephant

Was never this close to a grizzly bear

There is a great area in the Oklahoma City called Bricktown, which consists of cool nightclubs, restaurants and stores.  There is a small river walk area, much like San Antonio, so we were able to have a drink along the river, but had to have dinner inside because it was too hot. 

There was a great ballpark, but unfortunately no games while we were there.  Mickey Mantle was born in Oklahoma so they had a plaza in the park named after him and there are several restaurants with his name as well.

Off to see Dorothy in Kansas.