The Rest of the Story (at Clayton Lake)

Every time we go to and from town we pass these mountains called Rabbit Ear Mt. We tried to "see" the rabbit ears but finally found out that it is named after an Indian Chief buried there who had frost bitten ears and was nicknamed Rabbit Ear. Our other view is the green oasis far off in the prairie. That is the state park and it is down in a canyon.
Our campsite is right in the center.
July 1. My birthday culminated with dinner in town. Bob treated June, Janet and me to a great dinner sans cake. Yippee! The wind kicked in big time so no campfire tonight but we made lots of energy.

The next day was a real relaxing day but hot in the low 90's, little breeze. We got invited to a fish fry via "Facebook". The kids we met at Ute, Lindsey & Rich, came up for the holiday and we met them at Mary's flower shop/restaurant, Lindsey's mom & dad's business. We then went to Mary and Tim's house where Rich was cooking a huge batch of fish brought in from Lake Texoma by a friend. It was a great meal and lots of visiting.
Meet Rich, Tim, Mary & Lindsey.

To town around lunch time the next day to get mail, Bob ate lunch at Mary's Back Porch restaurant and we again saw Lindsey, Rich and Mary and met Cecil.

We did our last geocache in the area
at Jack Ketchum's gravesite.

Back at the campground we rested and read, had circle then headed to town around 7 for the Street Dance. Vendors selling sausage and corn on the cob fed us our dinner and we had a great time dancing. Huge crowd. Most interesting was how young the children are who are dancing. I mean couple dancing and doing a great job. Kids are started out young in their parents arms and graduate to real dancing. Not running around. Two-step type. We found out that at age 5 thru 6th grade there are lessons and an Old Time Western dance contest for them and it is taken seriously. Another oddity was the men dancing with spurs on their boots. Glad we didn't bump into one of them. We saw our friends Mary, Tim, Lindsey & Rich.

July 4. To town early for the parade.

We wondered if Rich was driving his unit like this in the parade in Amarillo. We then did the laundry at Mary's laundry. One of her kids came and said we were invited to go with them to the BBQ at the park. We had already bought tickets and readily agreed.
Little Ricky really enjoyed his chocolate chip cookie. Mary & Tim have 4 grown children and have adopted 7 more (the oldest almost 18 and the Ricky almost 2) They are a wonderful family.

Afterwards we came home and promptly took naps in our lawn chairs. In the evening Bob and I went in for the rodeo. It was great fun. We had been to BIG professional rodeo's but this was local and lots of kids. It was great fun. It rained while we were there but we were undercover. Left early when we got cold but went back to the fairgrounds for fireworks. Brad and Janet were there also and we parked next to them. It was raining so in order to talk we had our umbrella's open out the window. Fireworks were good. Then it was home for a nightcap and visit with them.

Up early the next morning to shouting boy scouts as they packed up to leave. This troop was twice the size of the last one so lots of noise.

Bob packed up the garage for our move to Sugarite. Near us was what we called the Flintstone picnic table so we had our picture taken by a neighbor.
You can see the storm beginning to build. The Ranger came and said we were in for a bad storm with 60 mph winds and 1/2' hail. We had the winds and promptly put down the dish and brought in the slides. No hail. We then were treated to the most beautiful double rainbow that lasted for almost an hour followed by the prettiest sunset we have had here. It's hard to leave but we will come back in the future.