It was approximately 6:30 when we had a knock on the door to find Brett and Jameson waiting to come in. He was on his way to drop him off at daycare. He was a bit fussy this morning - I beliee it was near his morning nap time.
When I was making our reservation for Bernice SP, I was unable to find check in and check out time, so I made a call directly to the park to ask. Interesting, it is not on their website, but once you receive your final conformation - it is in the small print. The lady at the park told me check-in time is 5pm. Wow - that's really late. However, she said just give us a call and we'll let you know if anyone is in the site. If not, we can come on in. We took our time getting around this morning, we both wanted to shower as our tanks were far from full, after using them only three days. We were inside Brett's house through the day, and only in the RV early morning and shortly before 8pm. At 10:30 this morning, I looked up the number for the park on Google. To my surprise, it said they were closed on Monday's and Tuesday's, but I decided to give them a call just to be sure. Well, sure enough, they were closed, so we couldn't check to see if the site was open or not. That was disappointing, but it is what it is. So, now that we had our showers, most everything was packed and we have several hours to wait. It's only an hour and a half drive from Brett's to Bernice.
Now, that we knew we couldn't leave right away, we needed to find something to do in the meantime, so we decided we would have lunch somewhere. I sent Brett a text to see if he would be available to have lunch with us, but we never heard back. We assumed he was busy at work, or was on a call. I had already finished my blog post covering our weekend with Jameson, so as we often do, we decided to take a drive around the countryside and see more of Lamar, MO; hoping we might still hear from Brett. They have a lake in the southwest part of town with some beautiful homes in that area. I find myself looking at homes much closer than I ever have, as we are in the planning stages of our own. I wish I could go inside too!! Lol!
Shortly after the noon hour, we decided to find a place to eat. Dean suggested we go to Mother Tucker's for a sandwich, and I was fine with that decision, since the pizza we purchased was so good. The restaurant is located at the Lamar Golf Course. It was a busy place. Not only was the golf shop next door, they also had a large variety of golf carts for sale! Cars were coming and going since it was noon hour at the restaurant, and what appeared to be a gathering for an afternoon of golf.
They had a few sandwich choices, but we ended up going with their salad/pizza bar (all you can eat). The salad bar was very nice with several "topping" selections to choose from, as well as the pizza bar (which also included a dessert pizza). We were lucky to find an empty booth - fortunately somewhat apart from the others. We tried several pizza choices including sausage, pepperoni, candian bacon, and a chicken alfredo with bacon. They were all delicious but I really enjoyed the chicken alfredo most. When I first noticed the dessert pizza it was cherry - but it was gone in no time, when I went back they had apple. It was good but the cherry looked better.
We were stuffed but the plan was not to eat much for dinner to try and offset the calories we had today!
We returned to Bentley where we waited another hour and a half to two hours before Dean said let's go ahead and get ready and hope for the best. We needed to dump the tanks when we arrived anyway, so we knew that would take a little extra time.
When Dean went to unhook the water from the faucet on the other side of a small building Brett has, water was standing all around it. Oh no - apparently there is a leak somewhere. When we unhooked our hose, he shut the faucet off. About 10-15 minutes later I walked back to see if it was still leaking, but the standing water had already soaked into the ground. Dean went to the water meter to get the reading and sent it to Brett so he could compare it when he returned home later as well, just to be sure.
It was 2:45 before we finally pulled out of the driveway and we headed west to I-49 that took us via I-44 toward our location of Bernice, OK. It was an easy drive today. We were glad to be inside with the air conditioning, except for the crazy fly that decided to hitch a ride with us. Not too far from our exit we noticed this semi heading toward us with what appeared to be smoke behind him. We thought he had a problem with a tire or something. I turned to see if there was an obvious problem, but only smoke - we thought. When I turned back around we realized it was raining and it was only water spewing up from the road.
Afton, OK was our exit from I-44 where we passed Buffalo Ranch.
Buffalo Ranch - we loved stopping here as kids to see the buffalo. There were several shops back then you could visit as well.The sky was pretty as we took our turnoff
It had rained here quite a bit.
where we headed south on Hwy 59, until the turnoff that led us toward Bernice (OK Hwy 125), and our final turn to OK Hwy 85A.
It's like coming home every time we are in this area. My family started coming to Grand Lake in 1968 with friends. My sisters and I had so much fun during those years. There were quite a few people from the Chetopa area that gathered in this part of the lake. Those times changed after my parents divorced. In the meantime my dad's cousin and her husband bought Bernice Point Resort and we often drove down. After they sold it, Dean and I were married a few years later. Shortly after we married we bought a small pull trailer that we parked at Bernice Point Resort. We went down as often as we could Later we purchased an older model pontoon boat from my Uncle. Our kids sure had a great time over the years, and a few years later we bought a new tritoon boat. We just have so many wonderful memories of our years at this beautiful lake.
As we pulled through the park to the area of our site, I immediately noticed our site was empty! Yea! We pulled clear around the park in order to pull in to the dump station. Soon that chore was taken care of, and we moved over to our site. In the meantime the site just north of us that was empty, was now occupied. While getting set up we acknowledged each other, but I had to focus on getting Dean into the spot. It wasn't that hard, just not quite a straight shot. In a short time we were soon set up. Our water was leaking at the post, even though the handle was shut off. I put the slides out and turned the A/C on. Our site is nicely shaded except for a short time (when we arrived) of the day when the sun was right on us. Fortunately it didn't last too long, but with it already hot inside, we decided to take a little drive, which turned it to a longer one - which often happens with us.
As we walked out the door we noticed the camp host was next door talking to our neighbors. Dean walked over to let him know about the water leaking. He said they knew about it and it was on a list to be repaired as soon as the spot was empty. Of course, once we hooked our hose up to it, it stopped, so we gave it no more thought after that.
Before we left I took these pictures from our campsite:
What a view!!
The park is very, very busy!!
We drove into the City of Bernice, down to Southwinds Marina where we often stopped to get fuel for the boat, and occasionally stopped in the restaurant they had there. We were surprised to see the restaurant was gone!
We then headed back toward Bernice bridge, then turned off to the northwest and curled around the roads along the bluff on the lake to the north. We ended up going clear along the west edge back to Highway 59 that we came in on.
See the lone cow in that slimy pond!
We decided for dinner we'd head to Braum's in Grove for ice cream. We haven't had any in quite awhile. We both chose a pecan praline shake. They were pretty good, but we prefer a thick shake but we got a really thin shake you had to use a straw with. All of the pecans sunk to the bottom of the shake. It did taste good though! We barely were back in the truck when Matt called wanting to know if we wanted to Facetime. He said Josh wanted to show us what he bought with the birthday money we sent him. He finally had a chance to spend it!! We asked him to give us 20 minutes and we'll call when we return to Bentley.
After we returned we let Matt know and we soon watching Josh show us and introduce his new toy characters to us. He was so happy to get them and thanked us for the money we sent so he could purchase them. We really enjoyed visiting with him and Dad. During the call, Marc called me, so I sent him an automatic text I would call him back.
After we hung up with Matt, we decided to take a walk around the loop here in the park......
Beautiful sunset!
On the way back our neighbors to the north of us were outside. We started visiting and must have talked to them for 30-45 minutes before heading inside. We enjoyed our visit with them and hope to have a chance to visit again. We told them about our Escapees group and suggested they give it a try and see if they would like to join. They seemed interested so I'm going to give them a flyer. I hope they will join us.
I remembered after we returned home that I told Marc I would call him. I enjoyed the visit with him. It was 10:30 before we hung up. It didn't take Dean and I long to get ready for bed. We were exhausted, but it has been a wonderful day. It feels good to be back on the road, seeing new things, meeting people and just relaxing.
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