Sunday, October 18, 2026
Wow! It’s only been two weeks since our last post. We are improving. When we last posted, we were in Blount County doing all the things like absentee voting, paying taxes and the like. We were able to visit with friends, go to our church and visit our dentist. After a good report from our long-time dentist and friend, we prepared Fred for another long trip. Early Friday morning, October 9th, we pulled out of Camp Sumatanga headed west toward Muskogee, OK. A trip of about 600 miles. This was our second trip to Muskogee and probably our 4th or 5th NOMADS trip to Oklahoma. It is also our second trip where NOMADS are working with Recovering Oklahomans After Disaster (R.O.A.D).
The more miles we drove, the warmer it got and by the time we stopped for the night in the rest area it was hot again. Thankful for our generator, we were able to keep Fred cool and we had no problems with our overnight stay. We were back on the road at first light and after a stop at Love’s for fuel we arrived at Hatbox Event Park, Muskogee, OK, our home for the next 3 weeks.
Our team leaders, Debbie and Monte were there to greet us and showed us where to park. We also met our other team members, Sherry, Janice, Ken, Michele, Dean, and Laurie. Saturday night we all enjoyed an amazing fireworks display in the park, put on by several local fireworks companies. The shows began about 7pm and continued until after 10pm. Longest and best fireworks we have ever seen – and all for free. Great way to begin our visit to Muskogee.
Sunday afternoon we had our first team meeting and began preparing for the work week. As is customary for NOMADS, on Monday morning we had devotion and then headed to our job site about 20 minutes from the park. We are working on an older double-wide trailer that needs lots of work. A flooding rain damaged the trailer in 2022 and things seemed to have gone downhill since then. We are repairing floor joists, sub-flooring, flooring, drywall, front and back porches as well as replacing insulation. We had a team of 10 this week and accomplished a lot, but there is still much to do. We also had to deal with torrential rain on Wednesday and Thursday. We couldn’t work Thursday because we couldn’t get in on the dirt roads but worked Friday instead.
The annual Jeep Jam has been going on this weekend. The park is full of all types of Jeeps and lots of families enjoying the festivities.
