Friday at Brooken Cove

Lake Eufala, September 18

The park filled up today and that sucked royally. Trucks were parked in the grass, and even on the street, although there were two completely empty parking lots. Apparently Oklahoma people are too lazy to walk twenty feet to a parking space. It got noisy, too. I didn't care to sit outside and take my breakfast coffee because the two ladies at the site behind us were talking and I'd have to listen to every word. Now that the weather has cooled down (a tad--it's sweater weather in the mornings) our air conditioner fan is turning off, and every time it does I hear conversation outside. It's not super objectionable, and there's no loud music blaring, but still it's not the reason I leave my comfortable home and drive three hours.

We went fishing in the afternoon, but we weren't expecting to stay long. The batteries that run the trolling motor were lapsing. At first Ed suspected a single battery was at fault, but as the time went on he began to wonder if it was the charger. No way to know until we got them home and tested them, so we used it for a while and then gave up.  We had no luck fishing, anyway.The day started off calm but got windier and windier. But I did see Canada Geese, seven of them! Is it migration time yet, or did they stick here all summer?

I took Molly for a jog to the other campground, along the road and next to a lovely forest:

 

 

 

 

 

and gave her a chance to smell out the weird hills (molehills?) all over the place.

Then I spent the rest of the afternoon planning out our drive for the next day and learning about the area in which we would be traveling. Northeastern Oklahoma includes the edges and foothills of the Ozark Mountains that make up most of the northern half of Arkansas. Across the state line in Arkansas, this section of the Ozark Plateau is know as the Boston Mountains, and they are the highest and most rugged section of the Ozarks. If we'd gone camping in Devil's Den State Park, we'd have been right in the middle of them.

Geologically, the Boston plateau has capping rocks of Pennsylvanian age with the oldest rocks representing stream deposits flowing off the Ouachita Mountains into an ocean while the younger rocks are mostly deltaic. (formed by a river delta). The Ouachita Mountains run farther south, from the middle of Arkansas to MacAlester, Oklahoma. In Oklahoma these Pennsylvanian sandstones and shales are generally referred to as the Crookson Hills.

The Arkansas River borders the Ozark Plateau to the west, then turns east and slices a large valley across Arkansas to the Mississippi River.  The river valley separates the Ozarks from the Ouachitas,<quote> an area of folded ridges and valleys that is a geologist’s (and sightseer’s) paradise.  Clastic Paleozoic rocks predominant, (deposition in a shallow marine environment, the continental shelf), as opposed to limey rocks in the Ozark Mountains.  During most of the Paleozoic the area which is now the Ouachitas was a deep offshore abyssal plain, perhaps more than 3000 feet below sea level (Arkansas Geological Survey, 2012).  But then the “big bump” came along as South America was pushed “north” and collided with Laurentia.
https://csmsgeologypost.blogspot.com/2014/07/oklahoma-geology-east.html

The Canadian River, which flows pretty much all the way across Oklahoma from New Mexico and Colorado (and cuts through the Texas panhandle), joins the Arkansas River and continues East after a sad stop at the Robert S. Kerr Reservoir near the Arkansas border.

And that was where we'd be headed next day.