Lake Murray, Oklahoma with FrenzyFriends

It happened! It finally happened! Yes, a PhotoFrenzy finally happened with my FrenzyFriends, Lisa and Karlie, in this new year. OK, so it is almost the end of the second month of the new year but due to weather, commitments, etc. we have not been able to schedule or fulfill a PhotoFrenzy together this year. That is until this past Friday.

We weren’t exactly sure where we were going on this outing until that morning. We selected our assignments and were ready to go. We had created a list of about 50 different options of assignments to help us with inspiration of what to shoot on our Frenzies. The items are numbered and we randomly select two numbers each outing. Whatever numbers are selected, determines our assignments. Our two assignments for this PhotoFrenzy were Lake Pictures and Clashing Colors. So with our assignments, cameras and excitement, we were on our way.

The night before, while looking to gather ideas for our destination, I came across an interesting place that I had never known was located just about 45 miles north of where we live. It is known as Camp Howze and consists of 59,000 acres of remains of an old World War II Training Camp and then later a Prisoner of War Camp for German Soldiers. It is an amazing sight to see all of the foundation posts sticking up from the grass for as far as the eye can see. I am still amazed that after living here almost all of my life, I’ve never known of this place.

After shooting a few shots of the remains, which were NOT part of our assignment, we headed on towards the north – our destination…Lake Murray, Oklahoma. Lake Pictures should be pretty easy to find at, well, the lake! But, Clashing Colors? Hmm, it is still pretty brown with not much color to be found. Oh, how I long for spring colors and temperatures! But where there is a will, there is a way! So Clashing Colors we will find! (At this point, I will confess: for 3/4 of our trip, I was looking for Contrasting Colors, as I thought that was our assignment. Lisa kept saying Clashing Colors, Karlie and I said Contrasting Colors. Finally pulling out our assignment sheet, discovered  – as usual – Lisa was right.)

Once arriving in the vicinity of the lake, we decided to drive around the entire circumference, so we took a country road off of the interstate which dropped us at the southwest side of the lake. We immediately began looking for a place to stop and have our lunch. Lisa had packed a picnic lunch for us to have and her lunches are always such a treat. And it was a good thing she had, as there was no place around to even pick up a bag of chips!

We found a location near the water and parked at the edge of a boat ramp. As we enjoyed our lunch, we watched diving ducks. That was quite a sight! I’ve seen ducks dive down under water before but nothing like this. Those ducks would dive and stay underwater for such a long time that in some cases we never did see them pop back up!

After devouring our lunch (we were quite hungry by this time), we drove up to an area to photograph an interesting rock tower. I’m still not sure what it was, but it was worthy of the stop.

Continuing on, we stopped at another park area and were greeted by a couple of hungry geese. These silly geese came to us looking for food, and food is what they got. Lisa always seems to have some kind of extra food tucked away in the case we come across hungry animals. This trip, our geese friends received pieces of an extra Luna granola bar. One of our little feathered friends greeted us with a hiss, would take his bite and hiss again. Quite funny!

Another stop a little further down the road landed us at the north side of the lake and at a trailhead. Still having not found my Clashing Color photo, I began scouring the area for a possible shot. And lo and behold, I found it. Not exactly what I was expecting to use but the colors are clashing, just the same.

As we are walking down the trail, Karlie or Lisa one, discovered tracks. And they were not mine. No, these were tracks of a rather large animal. Not knowing exactly what kind of animal it was, we did however know that it had claws and sharp ones at that. We could also tell these tracks were rather fresh. Let’s just say, we continued down the trail with awareness of our surroundings and with a little quicker snap to our step and made a return perhaps a little sooner than we would have otherwise. Later on, at another stop, we saw examples of animal prints and discovered our find was tracks of some type of wolf. So glad we weren’t wearing our red riding hoods!

After a couple more stops, we wrapped up the final stop of our day as we made a trip up a short distance to Tucker Tower. The views from the top, after climbing several flights of narrow stairs including a spiral staircase, were breathtaking! What a perfect ending to a perfect day. A wonderful frenzy with wonderful friends!