After a night of heavy rain, we woke up to a soggy campsite with standing water. The rooftop tent is great for this kind of conditions and is much more comfortable than sleeping in a tent on the saturated ground. The stream near the campsite rose about two feet overnight and the ground is so saturated that there were small waterfalls sprouting from the sides of the hills and pouring over the stone steps to hiking trails.
We walked over to the cafe and dam area where we had dinner the previous night. The picnic grounds were partially submerged and the color of the water in the lake and over the falls had changed from a beautiful clear color to red/brown with all of the silt that had been washed into the river.
The original plan was to spend another day at this beautiful park to explore the trails, but the weather forecast was for more rain and thunderstorms. When we left, we decided to use the longer route out of the park and avoid the road with the hairpin switchbacks.
We entered Oklahoma at 11:30 and stopped at the Visitor’s Center to pick up some maps and local knowledge about the state parks.
The driver on I40 through Oklahoma City made us glad we were doing this part of the trip on a Sunday instead of a weekday. The traffic was quite heavy and there was a lot of road construction with Jersey barriers on both sides of narrowed lanes.
We pulled into Red Rock Canyon Adventure Park about 4:00. This park was previously a state park and is now privately owned. The entrance into the park is down a very steep and winding road through red rock walls. The campsites are along the bottom of the canyon and the color of the walls in the evening was beautiful.
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