At this point in my life, there are very few people that we see on a regular basis who have known either of us for very long (excluding our families of origin), but every once in awhile we get the privilege to reconnect with someone from our past.
Early in our marriage, Daniel and I agreed that whenever possible, we would say yes to putting people first. Meaning if someone asks us to meet them for a meal, we try to say yes. If someone is in town and wants to drop by, we try to say yes. That kind of thing.
To be honest, we have been a bit surprised that in 16 years of marriage these instances are actually pretty infrequent. So when they do occur we are all the more certain to attempt to make time for people, even if just for a few hours.
When I was mapping our route for this trip, I realized we would be passing really close to where one of my old college roommates currently lives.
I met Lisa and her husband Erik in the fall of 1998, our freshman year of college (they were high school sweethearts), and we quickly became friends. Lisa and I ended up living together our Jr. and Sr. years and have a lot of shared memories from that time of transitioning from teenagers to adults. We would eventually be in each other's weddings and Daniel and I visited the Granbergs in Oregon about 13 years ago when we had the opportunity to vacation in their home state.
Other than that, our lives really haven't crossed paths as adults. So I reached out to her and was ecstatic to learn we would be able to coordinate a visit. Unfortunately due to our time restraints, we really only had time for an afternoon/evening visit, but nonetheless, we were excited to make the stop.
After packing up our site in Gore Landing, OK we continued on until we reached Enid, about 3 hours away. We arrived too late for lunch, but were still able to spend the afternoon visiting, which quickly turned into a shared meal of pizza squeezed around their dining table before heading on our way.
I love when catching up with old friends feels like absolutely no time has passed. We relive all of our old stories, the ones from college and the ones from our early years of adjusting to marriage. And then we pick right up with the present.
Lisa and her husband have a large family, including adopted and foster kids, and our boys jumped right into the fray and LOVED every minute of it. I was sad to leave from this quick visit, but my boys may have been sadder. They talked about the Granbergs for months after and would ask when we were going back to visit "mommy's friend from college." These are the sweetest moments, and I am so glad we were able to squeeze in this stop.
After leaving Enid, it was starting to get dark but we decided we needed to drive at least a couple of hours to get further down the road to our first official site-seeing stop of the trip: Black Mesa.
We made it as far as the Walmart in Guymon, OK. This would be our first experience Boondocking.
I recently read an article about boondocking that said at some point in your camper life, you would experience the following kinds of boondocking: Boondocking (camping on public lands), Wallydocking (camping in a Walmart parking lot), Moochdocking (camping at a friend's house and mooching their electricity and water), and finally staying in undeveloped campgrounds. We would go on to experiences all of these types of boondocking before the end of this trip.
Anyways, Guymon, OK was where we had our first Wallydocking experience. After driving past a prison somewhere on Hwy 412, with warnings not to pick up hitchhikers, we were a little leary of camping at Walmart, but we were tired and needed to stop.
We ended up having a good experience. We parked by the other campers who were already set up at the edge of the parking lot (but faced away from them). The night time temps were perfect. The kids were already asleep, so we just moved them from carseats to their bunks in the camper. Daniel had replaced all of our lightbulbs with LED bulbs before the trip, so we still had light, even without the generator.
When we woke up the next morning, Isaac looked out the window and upon seeing Walmart said, "I found the grocery shop!" Once everyone was up, I walked across the parking lot to restock our groceries for the next couple of days while Daniel and the boys played soccer in an empty water retention area (field) next to our camper. We felt safe and woke up well rested. We were sold on Wallydocking for future use on travel days.
My next post will be about our visit to Black Mesa, OK, a wild drive through rural New Mexico, and camping in Alamosa, CO.
Trip Stats
Camping Locations: Pickwick Landing State Park in Tenn., Gore Landing City Park in Okla., Wallydocking in Guymon, OK
States Covered: TN > GA > AL > MS > TN > MS > TN > AR > OK
Daily Miles Traveled: 227 miles ⎮ 445 miles ⎮ 403 miles
TOTAL Miles Traveled: 1,075 miles
Days on the Road: 4
From my Instagram Diary (the day of):
Utah Road Trip Diaries: Day 3 was a much better day, but we are still working on our mobilization time. Our reality is that packing up camp and getting two little boys and a dog ready and in the car just takes awhile. The Gore Landing City Park campground was clean and quiet and cheap. We continued across Oklahoma to Enid with a planned stop to see one of my college roommates and her family. Our boys had the time of their lives running around and playing with their 6 kids, and Daniel and I enjoyed catching up with our old friends. I met Lisa and Erik my freshman year of college and I roomed with Lisa my junior and senior years. We have known each other for almost 20 years and it was honey for my soul to catch up with someone who knew me from a time when I was just becoming an adult and discovering who I was. We picked up just where we left off and our five hour visit passed way too fast. We last saw them when they lived in Oregon and their oldest was two. We have all changed a lot in the last 12 years. I hope it isn’t that long before we meet again! After doing a load of laundry and eating pizza with them, we pressed on the Guyon, OK where we had our first boondocking experience in a Walmart parking lot. It was quiet, clean and we felt very safe. And it was free! I’m glad Guyon was there because it was late and we were getting tired and there is very little in the Panhandle of Oklahoma.
and
Utah Road Trip Diaries: Day 4 feels like we are finally past all of the crazy long days of driving and we’re into the actual fun part of our trip. We boondocked in a Walmart parking lot and woke up to gray skies. Daniel and the kids played soccer while I walked to Walmart to get groceries and supplies. We had our earliest start and headed for Black Mesa in the northwest corner of OK...
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