nomads – RVing With a Purpose

2026 Muskogee DR Week 2 (Our Week 1)

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 4^th or 5^th 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.

The show ended with a combination fireworks and drone show.

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.

Laurie and Janice reinforcing floor joists in the back bedroom

Dean and Ken building the new front porch

Dean and Ken making concrete pad at the base of the steps

The most unusual of the dozen cats living at the house

During the heavy rain on Thursday we got a little concerned when we saw crawfish seeking higher ground.

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.

We watched several jeeps attempt the mud pit …

The Jeep Jam ended with kids racing though the mud pit.

Scenic Byway 12 to Capitol Reef National Park

Thursday, June 4, 2026

Wednesday, June 3 we left Bryce Canyon National Park en route to Capitol Reef National Park. We were surprised and very pleased with the drive on Scenic Byway 12. We drove 12 almost all the way to Capitol Reef. We both agree that this is the best scenic highway we have experienced. The scenery was amazing. We can’t say enough good things about the drive. Highly recommend! We hope the pictures come close to what we actually experienced. We hope to return to spend several days driving and camping along Highway 12 between Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef national parks.

Arriving at Capitol Reef National Park we first stopped at the Visitor’s center with the next stop being the Bakery at the Gifford Homestead. That’s where you purchase your pie or pies in our case. Anything you read about Capitol Reef will surely make mention of the pies. They sell out every day – usually before 3pm. They also sell cinnamon rolls, but we had to wait until Thursday morning for those because they were already sold out. They say you must be there before noon to get the cinnamon rolls so we were there by 10:00 on Thursday. Of course, Capitol Reef is much more than the bakery and we did some nice hiking and drove the scenic loop as well before departing for our next destination.

Our Thursday morning hike was the Hickman Bridge Trail

Lots of steps at the beginning of the trail

One of several domes which contributed to the park’s name

This is the first bridge we came to on the trail. When we came back out some one asked us if this was the Hickman Bridge

Hickman Bridge. Anne is in front as a size reference.

Unlike yesterday’s hike, today we went uphill first instead of last.

We made it back to the the bakery in time to get two cinnamon rolls. (We weren’t fast enough to get pictures of the pies, but they were the same size as the rolls.)

One of the features the early settlers called “reefs”

We have seen a lot of red rocks on this trip but we keep finding something different on each drive.

This formation made us think of barber poles.

Since we didn’t have all our logistics planned out we made use of the campground dump station and water fill before we left.

Still interesting but somewhat less scenic after we left the park

Our next few days are going to be heavy driving days hoping to avoid some of the heat.

Bryce Canyon National Park

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

After leaving Kodachrome State Park, we had a very easy drive day of about 1 hour to our destination at Bryce Canyon National Park. We visited this park a number of years ago but since we had a friend camp hosting there this year we decided to revisit the area and visit our friend John. We got set up at our site, had some lunch and then visited with John. Later in the afternoon we hiked from our camp site, to the Rim Trail, to Sunset campground, picked a site for Tuesday night and back to our campsite – 4 ½ miles. Didn’t plan to hike that far when we started but…we just kept going. There is a lot of beautiful scenery and many improvements since our last visit such as the new General Store.

Tuesday, we relaxed and worked on preparing for our Wednesday Bible Study. About 10:00 we visited with John again and then drove the scenic drive through the park – so nice. At the end of the road we stopped and hiked the Bristlecone Pine Loop – about 1-1/2 miles. Bristlecone Pines are very interesting trees, looking a lot like a bottle brush and can live for as long as 5,000 years. The remainder of Tuesday we got set up at the new campsite, Sunset Campground, visited with our neighbors and finished our preparation for Bible Study.

Wednesday morning we packed up BB for another travel day but not before we decided to hike the Navajo Loop Trail. We had done a portion of this trail on our last trip but today we did it all. It is only 1.5 miles but has over 500 feet of elevation gain at the end. It is a hard hike by our definition but the Park seems to think it is moderate. It is a great hike – very pretty but…we may be sore tomorrow.

After saying goodbye to John, we began our travel to our next destination.

Kodachrome Basin State Park, Utah

Tuesday, June 2, 2026

We arrived at Kodachrome Basin State Park Saturday afternoon, May 30. We were tired from the day’s drive and activities, so we settled in on our site, had some dinner, walked around the campground a little and got some great sleep. It was a very quiet and peaceful night.

Sunday morning we watched Lester Memorial’s 8:30 am service – 7:30 am for us since we are now on Mountain Daylight Time. After an excellent service, we had breakfast and then headed out for a hike on the Panorama Trail at about 10:30. The information on the hike advised that this was a 3 mile hike that winds its way across the western side of the park. You can view several sedimentary pipes and explore interesting geological features such as Secret Passage, Ballerina Spire and Mammoth Spire Overlook. Difficulty was rated as easy to moderate. This was a great hike even though we started a little too late and it turned into a 4 mile hike for us because we started at the campground instead of the trail head. Gorgeous scenery!

Watching our home church service in the beauty God created

The sandstone features look bigger in the pictures. 🙂

One panorama

Wide variety of sandstone features along the trail

Looking down at Mammoth Spire (off in the distance)

Panorama Trail hike stats

After returning to the campground, we met a couple that has a Beyond RV that is the same year as BB with a slightly different floorplan. They followed us into the park on Saturday afternoon but we didn’t meet until Sunday afternoon. They have had their RV for less than a year and had lots of questions. We enjoyed getting to make some new friends and being able to answer some of their questions. The rest of the day we recovered from the morning hike.

Monday morning we wanted to hike one more trail, Angel’s Palace Trail. This trail was tagged as an excellent trail for photographers, and it did not disappoint. It was a little over 1.5 miles depending on how many of the side ventures you took. We of course took them all. The trail has magnificent views of Kodachrome Basin, Bryce Canyon and all the surrounding areas.