As I wrote yesterday’s post , I could hardly believe it was September. The time flies by so quickly – in another three weeks, summer will officially be fall. Other than a couple of short walks in the Aux Arc Corps of Engineers Park (COE), we stayed mostly indoors due to the heat and humidity. Ozark the cat kept us amused. She loves to play with her toys. She has a catnip filled mouse that Donna’s mother made and two more that I bought. She bats them around, knocking them several feet away, then chases them down.

Another favorite of hers is a rolled up section of parchment paper tied to a string that Donna made. On Tuesday night, I hung it from the dining table. Ozark would creep up to it in stealth mode, then attack. She batted it like a tetherball (Wikipedia). She would roll over and bat it around with her left paw, then her right. Very entertaining to watch – and good exercise for her.

Ozark eyeing the tethered parchment toy

Ready to strike with her right paw

She got it

We pulled out of the park around 9:15am Wednesday morning and drove through the town of Ozark to I-40 (map). Our first stop was about an hour away at the Pilot/Flying J in Roland, Oklahoma. I had mapped out our next few fuel stops. I wanted to fuel up in Roland and once again before we left Oklahoma – I’ll avoid filling up in the Texas panhandle where most of the stations are pumping B20. I wrote about my fuel preferences in this post.

Our route after leaving the Meriwether Lewis National Monument in Tennessee on US64 has overlapped much of the Trail of Tears. The Trail of Tears is a sad note in our nation’s history. On May 28, 1830, our congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This resulted in the forced relocation of Native American tribes from the southeast including the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations.

Treaties were signed that resulted in these people being moved to what was referred to at the time as the Indian Territory – presently known as Oklahoma. The forced removal and poor travel conditions resulted in the death of thousands of Native Americans. Thus the name Trail of Tears.

We drove through the Cherokee Nation on I-40 then went south on US69 through Eufaula along Eufaula Lake. Then we headed west on AR9. We had a variety of road surfaces ranging from surprisingly good on parts of I-40 to patches of heaved roads that had things banging around in the coach.

After a GPS SNAFU (which the park owner says is common with their address) we finally found the Time Out RV Park in Chickasha, Oklahoma. We’re here for one night after a long day on the road, then we’ll push on to Amarillo, Texas. We’re pushing to get to Amarillo for a few reasons. I want to put the humidity behind us, Donna wants to see a hair stylist there and we need to to sit in one place long enough to get mail and maybe an Amazon delivery or two. Amarillo should work although the RV parks there don’t look to be the best.

The temperature when we arrived in Chickasha was 95 degrees, but the humidity was under 40%. We can expect high daytime temperatures in Amarillo, but the humidity will be even lower than here.