Well Folks, we are (finally) off. We had planned to leave Jefferson last Sunday but experienced a slight delay. Seems the transmission on our truck finally decided to give out. One can’t blame it too much as the truck has just under 400,000 miles on it. So, Quint Gale (our friend and trusted mechanic) to the rescue! He ordered us another transmission and squeezed us in to his very busy schedule, installing it in less than a day after it arrived.

Our destinations for this trip are the highest mountains we can find. It’s been hot in Jefferson so cooler weather is calling us. Our first destination is the Big Horn Mountains in north-central Wyoming. We plan to spend about a week there. We will then trek to Red Lodge, Montana where we will stay for 5-6 days. Next, we head up over the Beartooth Parkway to the Northeast Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. From there, we will head south and east eventually returning to Jefferson in the first or second week in September.

We anticipate our blog entries for this trip will be more subdued than on past trips. Due to Covid-19, we will not be visiting near the number of locations we would like to see. Mostly we will be seeking isolation and communing with nature.

Our first stop was a really great boondocking site in Oklahoma. Blue River Public Fishing and Hunting Area is an unknown gem (except for the locals) located in Oklahoma, about 130 miles north of Dallas. While this spot was not all that far from Jefferson (especially for our first stop), it served us well. Seems we got a late start, leaving around noon on Friday, 24 July.

Meriam has been wanting to visit this site ever since she heard the State of Oklahoma stocks the river with rainbow trout during the winter months. There are no man-made structures controlling the waters of the spring-fed Blue River. It is a totally free-flowing, spring-fed stream from its source to the mouth of the Red River. Hence its clear waters, just right for trout during the winter months! As you can see from the photographs, it also makes a great swimming hole during the summer months!

A bit of history of the area is perhaps in order. This area of the river was settled by Austin Britte Hughes and his wife Mamie Cravatt in 1895. Being of Chickasaw Indian lineage, the Hughes’ benefited from an 1886 Congressional law providing Indian citizens land allotments. Hughes selected his allotments along and adjacent to a six-mile stretch of the Blue River. His original allotments were eventually sold in 1950 to a local landowner and later sold to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation for establishment of the Blue River Public Fishing and Hunting Area. Nice to see this land returned to public use.