On to Oklahoma

We’re on our way from Dallas to Kansas, where we plan to visit a couple of RV factories. We decided our first stop on the way north would be Lake Murray State Park, near Ardmore, OK. In addition to camping, the park offers fishing, boating, scuba diving, golf, picnics, horseback riding, hayrides, hiking, biking, roller blading, swimming, miniature golf, paddle boating, tennis, softball fields, baseball diamond, horseshoe pits, badminton and volleyball nets, an ATV area, an airstrip, bait and tackle shop, marina with rentals and enclosed fishing dock, swimming pool, swimming beach, riding stable, remote control air field, and miniature golf. This is the largest state park in Oklahoma. We've set up camp in a campground called Elephant Rock, one of eight campgrounds in the state park. The best sites are wooded and more secluded than others, but are on the lake with excellent views.














Lake Murray is the focal point of the state park.















Some parts of the park are more wooded than others.

Once we set up camp at Lake Murray yesterday, we got to work setting up our two satellite dishes for the first time. We have a Winegard tripod to hold the 18” dish antenna that we got from DirecTV. We bought a larger oval dish antenna for HughesNet internet service. This dish and its mount weigh enough that they came with a construction-grade tripod. We got both dishes just before we left the Dallas area, and we didn’t have a chance to set them up and point them at the satellites until we got here. We set up the TV dish yesterday so soon as we the trailer unhitched and set up. It was a cinch. We put the dish on the tripod, took a crack at pointing it, and went inside to see if there was anything on our TV. We had a beautiful picture! Must be beginners luck.

Unfortunately, our luck ran out when we moved on to the internet dish. We started on that this morning. We loaded the antenna management and pointing software first, then went outside and set up the hardware. Getting all the pieces put together was easy enough, but pointing the dish was not. We spent most of the day trying one thing after another without getting any action on the signal strength meter. We finally figured out what we were doing wrong and got a good signal late in the afternoon. Then we went back into the trailer to make the last adjustments needed on the software. We didn’t get that right until we called technical support for help. By the time we were done with the whole process, the day was pretty much over. It will go quicker next time. We hope.














Our campsite is decorated by the two satellite dishes.

This morning we checked out Tucker Tower. This is a rock structure built on a bluff next to the lake in Oklahoma’s Lake Murray State Park. The top of the tower provides great views of the lake, but there are good views even from the walk up to the tower from the parking lot. The tower was built in the 1930s by the Work Progress Administration--the WPA. When federal funds were made available to Oklahoma, state Senator Fred Tucker wanted a lake created in a particular spot. He promised to do two things for Governor Murray if the governor would allocate some of the funds to build the lake. He promised to name the lake after the governor. And he promised to build a retreat home for the governor—the structure that came to be known as Tucker Tower. The tower was never used by the governor, and years later it was turned into a nature center. It houses fossils, skeletons, and examples of the types of rock found in the area.















Lee paused on the walk up to Tucker Tower to check out the view of the lake.