Put a Pin in it
(Saturday Traveling Stories part 15)
As we got closer to our stop for the night, Hurricane Creek Campground on Lake Barkley, Greta kept trying to change my route again. I insisted and let her know in no uncertain terms I didn’t care that it was going to take me 21 minutes longer. I wasn’t getting on no stinking Interstate.
I got my way and was happy about it because as we approached Fairview I saw this towering structure sticking up in the sky that was completely out of place. I asked M what she thought it was. She didn’t know and wisely said it was too tall and too odd a shape for a grain elevator.
Curiosity got the best of me, I pulled a quick move into the left turn lane and swung onto the road going into the little town of Fairview. Well, unbeknownst to me, there is a monument to Jefferson Davis there, and it looks just like the Washington Monument. I guess that was intentional to reflect him being the first President of the Confederacy.
We pulled into the parking area and looked it over. Then, we walked into the visitor center. There were two ladies behind the counter busy doing something but I couldn’t ever figure out what. When I commented to the older woman that I didn’t even realize such a monument existed, she gave me a look of disgust and then looked down and went back to doing whatever she had been doing and gruffly said, “You can look around the gift shop. The bathrooms are out there,” pointing to a pair of doors.
The younger woman was friendlier. “Where are you from?”
“Oklahoma.”
“Well, if you want to you can put a pin on that map over there indicating where you visited from.”
There was one other pin on the map stuck in Claremore, Oklahoma. It was red. I put a white one in right next to it. Boomer Sooner!
We also noticed, as we pulled into town, because we couldn’t help but see it as we drove right by it, there was an Amish Farmer’s Market there. That was our next stop. M picked out some squash and we had it for dinner. We also got a watermelon, some pickles, and another kind of squash. I think M got some molasses also, but I didn’t ask.
Leaving Fairview, we took some remote back roads that eventually led us to the campground for the night. I did the reservation on Rec.gov web site. I really like it. With our senior discounted price it was $10 for the night. I picked site 46 because we had been married 46 years. Had I known it was sloped and closest to the road I would have chosen differently. But it was fine for an overnight stop.
We checked in, got parked, set up, took a walk, checked out the showers, and had dinner.
A couple of woodpeckers were doing their thing in the trees above us. I got out the binoculars and spotted them. They are black and white. That was about all I could tell. The seemed to sense I was looking at them and flew away as soon as I got honed in on where they were.
We played backgammon. M got lost in the dark taking the trash to the dumpster, but eventually found her way back to camp. I went looking for her and enjoyed the sunset over the lake. The temps were nice for a good night of rest.
