WINTER GETAWAY 2026 - MORE Storms! Hugo Lake COE in Oklahoma

Before I start this blog, I just wanted to give another shout out to our granddaughter Whitney. She is 10 years old and has been reading our blogs and watching our YouTube channel for this entire trip. I just get a hoot out of this email she sent me:

And she finished it up with a couple post scripts: 

What a silly little goose. Thank you so much Whitney!

Okay, back to the blog. When we last left you, we were exiting Pat Mayes Lake and searching for somewhere that we could get out of the path of some of these storms.  It just seemed like every other day there was a wave of huge horrendous thunderstorms coming across from the southwest. 

We managed to find our way into Hugo Lake, just over the Texas border into Oklahoma.  The actual name of the campground is Kiamichi,  and it's part of the Army Corps of Engineers system. It is normally $18 a night with electric and water, but with our America the Beautiful Senior Access Pass, it's only $9 a night.

We reserved the campsite for seven nights in a row.  $63 for a whole week, some people pay that for just one night! But... now we wish we hadn't reserved for 7 nights. 

The park has a lot of beautiful nice level concrete campsites, each with a picnic table, fire pit and charcoal grill. Most of the part was shut down and only one loop in one area was open. But there were only two other campers in there, located way up at the beginning of the loop. Looks perfect!

Nick checked our site over while Steve was getting ready to back up the motorhome. It got the sniff test. He approved. There was a large grassy area where he could play with his fetch toy while on the end of his 100 foot long orange rope.

Steve got us all backed in and set up into place. It's so easy and nice and level and perfect. We didn't see any piles of ant mounds anywhere, so we didn't even have to think about insect prevention like we did in some of the Southern areas.

We figured that if the winds came blasting in from the north we would be somewhat protected on the southern edge of this little peninsula.  (Or so we thought!!!)

As we looked up in the trees we noticed these big clumps of green leafy mounds. But the rest of the tree is not budded out or leafed out in any way. So I did a little Googling:

Mistletoe – Mistletoe is a common, native parasitic plant in Oklahoma, often appearing as green, bushy clumps in deciduous trees during winter. As Oklahoma's official state floral emblem, it grows by penetrating tree branches to steal water and nutrients. While it can weaken trees and make them susceptible to stress,7, 14}, healthy trees can often tolerate minor infestations. 

Key Facts About Mistletoe in Oklahoma

Appearance: Green, leathery-leaved, ball-shaped shrubs found in the canopy of trees, especially during winter when trees are dormant.

Native Status: It is native to Oklahoma, with species like Phoradendron tomentosum and Phoradendron leucarpum commonly found.

Host Trees: It affects various hardwood trees, including oaks, elms, and maples.

Spread: Birds, such as cedar waxwings, consume the sticky white berries and deposit seeds on other branches, spreading the parasite.

Impact on Trees: It is a parasitic plant that can weaken trees, reduce growth, and make them more susceptible to drought or disease. However, a healthy tree can often withstand small amounts.

Removal: Simply breaking it off usually results in regrowth. The only effective removal method is pruning the infected branch 1–2 feet below the mistletoe attachment point.

So it sounds like it's pretty darn hard to get rid of!

We did find some deadfall branches that were just laying in the middle of the loop. Steve hauled them over and we used our little electric chainsaw to cut them up. If the winds died down, we might be able to have a campfire! He piled them up underneath the motorhome to keep them out of any potential rain coming our way.

This sure was a pretty cute place, and a very peaceful campsite. There isn't a lot going on in this area of the state so early in the season. But I bet the middle of summer this is quite busy.

We spent two nights here, relaxing and not doing a lot. But the second night we had such a downpour of rain that the waters of the reservoir went up between two and three feet!  We could see it along the shorelines where the water was now overflowing the banks. We were up pretty high, but still, it makes you nervous. 

We thought all of the storms were done.

The sun was shining and we decided to set out upon a bike ride and explore the rest of the park. 

Most of it was gated off to vehicle traffic. But with the e-bikes we could pedal around the gates and go into areas that weren't even being used this time of year. We actually went into some areas that don't even look like they were used at all --- for a long long time.

Off we went, with little Nick in his cart. It's so peaceful to pedal along throughout the park, with the birds singing and the sun shining. We really enjoy the E bikes and getting exercise and fresh air.

We were all about 5 miles away from the camper when the wind started picking up.  That seems strange, the weather report said we were all done with the storms??  We were all the way out in the far top of the screen in the pic below. 

Suddenly the sky turned very dark and angry!!! It's like it almost happened within a minute. Things were churning around and storming and we could feel a heaviness in the air. We started pedaling back to our campsite as quick as we could go.

Whew! We made it back in time. But boy were we getting blasted by the wind. Steve was struggling to put away the bikes, and poor Nick was blowing away in the breeze at the end of his leash. I got him stowed into the motorhome and we secured everything else that could possibly have blown away.

Once we got inside, we fired up our Starlink and took a look at the radar. Oh boy, look what was coming tonight! We are the "Orange Dot". 

What should we do? We were pretty exposed out on this point. We had seen the rising waters from the last rainfall overnight as well as big white caps coming in across the cove. The waves were splashing and the wind was blowing.

We were getting battered from the side and it was really tearing at our slide topper awnings. The whole motorhome was shaking in the wind.

So we decided the most prudent thing was to pull up stakes, pull in the slides, and head on to a more protected area. We found two other campgrounds around the same lake that were also part of the Corps of Engineer System. So we took off and headed to one to see if we could find a more sheltered campsite. 

We didn't do too well at that one, it was pretty wide open. So we drove on to another one up on the North side of the lake called Rattan Landing. There we were able to pull in and find a secure spot away from the worst of the storm before it hits.

 

I went online to try and transfer our reservation. It would not allow me to remove our reservation from the Kiamichi Park on Hugo Lake and change it to the Rattan Landing, even though they're all part of the same flowage.  Finally I called the help desk at Corp of Engineers through Recreation.gov. The lady there told me that unfortunately, the Kiamichi Park is run by vendors, and it's up to their discretion of their park manager whether or not to release us from our reservation. She did put in a request saying it was "weather related".  But she said we would have to wait until they contacted us back whether or not we could get a refund on our reservation. (They never did)

The problem is... In the meantime our America the Beautiful Senior Access Pass number is tied up with that reservation for five more nights. That means we cannot use that discount pass on any other campsites for five nights. Bugger! So even though we were safe and sound at Rattan Landing, we had to pay full price. Oh well, at least we were safe!!

MEANWHILE,

 BACK IN WISCONSIN, 

WE KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON THERE!

Thisvis the You Tube video that goes along with this blog:

30 miles traveled today 

1,279 miles traveled so far

Twas a Dark and Stormy Night!

Last night we went to bed after watching the 10 o'clock news with no warnings or alerts... but at 1a.m. it totally went whonky!   We had winds kicking up and our weather radio went off with not just thunderstorm watch, but now a full severe weather warning and heading our way!

We turned on the tv and caught the weather bulletins, and got ourselves dressed.  Soon we had the curtains all opened up and our lights on in case a tenter or two might seek refuge at the host sight, and at least they could see we were up and monitoring the situation.

Our rangers left at 11p.m. so nobody is on duty.  But a county sheriff came through the park with lights flashing and a repeating message on his loudspeaker instructing people to seek shelter (the block building shower house) and storms were approaching at the rate of 65 mph. He slowly drove up and down each of the six roads of the campground repeating his recorded message and alerting everyone of the impending storm.

We gathered flashlights and our wallets and were ready to head out if needed.  Steve lowered our awning and I watched the tv and listened to the updates of the weather radio.   The storms passed to north of us about 20-30 miles and we were in the clear.  WHEW!    

About 2 a.m. we finally went back to sleep...   safe and sound. 

Interesting though, a complaint from a camper wandering by in the morning.  He was actually complaining that sheriff's radio speaker woke him up (duh?  it's supposed to!)  and the flashing lights going wasn't enough to make him worried?  He complained the scratchy sounds from the speakers of the sheriff's car were distorted and he couldn't hear what the sheriff was saying, so he went back to sleep????    Geeesh, the sheriff risks life and limb to drive through a heavily wooded campground where at any minute a tree could fall on his car, just to warn all of us campers.... and that is the type of appreciation he gets?   OH VEY!  Can't fix stupid. 

Also another camper complained to me about the raccoons that got into his cooler.  Where did he leave it?  On his picnic table.  Okayyyyyyy  Then he proceeded to recite to me a complete shopping list of all the groceries that were eaten.   Okayyyyyyyyy  I am thinking to myself: was he looking for us to go shopping for him to replace his groceries?   I suppose, since it was a "park raccoon" that did it, somehow we must be responsible to replace his groceries?  LOL   I finally gave him directions to the nearest grocery store and left it at that.  

But I digress... most people were just thankful we didn't have the damages and troubles that another campground had between Kaukauna and DePere.  They lost roofs off some campers, and trees down all over and lots of damages but no major injuries, thank goodness. 

We only had a few branches down here and there, no trees down... and our power stayed on all night long.  Areas north and west of us fared much worse.  They had winds in excess of 100 mph.  They had roofs blown off, power lines down and roads blocked by trees.  We tuned into the local news at 6 a.m. to see the damages all north of us.  We were in the clear. 

It was still a damp wet morning, and very humid too.  It was too wet to shovel any firepits, plus all the rain would make for very messy heavy shovel fulls of ashes.   Instead, I set up my sewing machine outside and worked on some quilted hot pads in the morning.   

Various folks stopped by the site to get updates on the weather, find out where the worst road blockages were and if there were any more storms coming our way.  Many thousands of people north of us in the Appleton and Wrightstown areas didn't have power and many places were closed due to that outage. 

My sock knitting pal Peggy came down about 3 p.m. to get some spiffing up on her sock machine settings.  With a little tweak here and touch up there, she soon had it cranking away like a perfect machine.  Whhheeee heeeeee she will be working on socks in no time now.  

We chatted with our camping neighbors here and there, and ran around the campground a few times to check on things.  Kinda fun to zoom around in our little Cub Cadet Cart.  It's running just great now that Steveio did it's wonderful tuneup.

After a nice stir fry meal, we settled into our lawn chairs with adult beverages and I had my spinning wheel.  I spun well into the darkness, and do it mostly by feel anyhow than by actual sight.  Got another bobbin full of sock yarn done.  Sooo pretty in blues  and they will make some cozy socks for winter.

Tomorrow morning I should hit up the last few remaining campsites to clear out the fire pits, and doublecheck any of the ones leaving tomorrow so they are clean before weekenders show up.  Most of the park is reserved for the upcoming weekend so it will be a busy one.  

Let's see what tomorrow will bring?