October might be the best time to hook up your travel trailer and head to Dodge City, Kansas. The heat of the summer is over and the vacation crowds have dropped off. This will give you an open spot at a campground and a less crowded opportunity to explore the historical Dodge City.
Dodge City, is about 480 miles from our home in North Texas. MapQuest says it should take 7 hours to make the trip. Seven hours on MapQuest when towing actually means about eight hours or a little more for driving. This is mainly due to driving less than the posted speed limit and then add another thirty minutes (at least) on for fuel and dog stops.
So this trip really needs another stop for the night somewhere in-between home and our destination. That way we won’t feel completely burned out when we get there. I understand that eight hours isn’t a horribly long day of driving but once you add on the set-up time and a frustrated puppy into the mix, it feels much longer. Breaking up the trip makes it less stressful all the way around. Tammy and I plus Eva, can pull in to a campground, hook up the water and electric, extend the slides and relax for the rest of the day. Ordinarily, I won’t even unhook the trailer for an over-night stay.
Our First stop will be 219 miles north to the Road Runner RV Park, near Oklahoma City. MapQuest says that leg of the trip will take 3 hours and 11 minutes. So hopefully it is just a hair over four hours for us. Anyone that travels with dogs realizes four hours is a pretty decent trip. Quite frankly four hours is a long enough for me too. This pretty much breaks the trip into two equal parts with a four hour trip on day 2 as well.
The Road Runner RV Park in Oklahoma City is a campground that Tammy found online. They do not have a website so reservations must be made by calling their phone number. You can get more information by clicking here. This campground has very high ratings on-line.
The Roadrunner RV park is immaculate. It is a very nice, clean, and newer looking campground. I was also impressed with the staff here. They are very friendly and want to make sure you enjoy your stay. When I walked in to register I said “Wow, this campground is beautiful, I can see why your on-line ratings are high”. They have an upper and lower section to their campground, but either side is very nice.
The majority of sites are pull through and have level cement pads with full hook-up. However, there seem to be no picnic tables at the sites. I think this might be the first place we’ve visited like that. Despite that I am impressed with how well maintained this park is. The grass is mowed nice and short and it is extremely clean here. There may be some full timers here, but you wouldn’t know it.
When we arrived I believe the temperature was in the upper 60’s so we went inside the trailer after setting up. Usually for a one night stop I won’t disconnect the vehicle. However, we wanted to go to Brick Town for dinner so I unhitched.
Roadrunner RV Park is only seven minutes from brick town where you will find old buildings that have been converted from warehouses to restaurants, breweries, wine bars, and other shopping. One place we used to visit in Brick Town was the Tapwerks pub. Unfortunately they closed in 2020 during the pandemic. It is now called “The Joinery”, and we tried it out. The food was good but I wasn’t happy that I was charged an “alcohol tax” which increased the price of the 2 beers we had to almost $9.00 per beer. I won’t go back when a couple beers is the price of an entree. However, there are many more places to visit there for food and drink if you are so inclined.
That night the temperature dipped into the low 50s. It was nice to be running the furnace for a change instead of the AC.
We were in site 43 which just happened to have a street light very close to it. That acted as a pretty decent night light. In addition, it made it easy to take Eva out before the sun came up.
I really can’t think of anything negative to say about this campground. I wouldn’t hesitate to return here.
We booked a night for our return trip for the following Friday; but looking at the weather in Dodge City for that travel day was worrisome. Strong winds of 25-35 with gusts to 50. That doesn’t make for safe towing, unless you want a new trailer. So I went back to the office and delayed our return by one day hoping that the Dodge City KOA will extend our stay by one day.
Other than the highway noise it’s pretty quiet at the Road Runner RV Park. I did hear a train roll through somewhere nearby at about 2:00 AM. If you can’t tolerate road noise from the highway then this park will probably not be for you. Keep in mind that we had our windows closed and the furnace on so I’m sure it’s louder if you want your windows open. Those kind of noises (Road Noise and Trains) don’t bother us at all. Both of us could sleep with a Diesel Semi idling next to us.
This was the first trip we have made since the discovery and repair of the electric brake wires. The brakes worked normally, so that was a relief. You can read about that repair by clicking here. Next year I want to replace all the brakes and change the bearings and races.
We left the Road Runner RV Park at 10:00 AM. The drive was about five hours. Complicating part of the trip was Gores Travel Plaza in Seiling, Oklahoma. It is a fuel station which is part of the EFS fuel card program. If you don’t have an EFS card, you should get one, click here to read about it. Unfortunately, at Gores the EFS card doesn’t work at the pump, so you need to go in and have them manually run your card. This probably doesn’t seem like a big deal, but they only have one register for that. It would not read my card.
I know this is an ongoing problem for them, because the person behind the counter told me the things they try to do to get it to work. After trying these things about 15 times I just paid at the regular register with a credit card. I was not happy about this since I didn’t get the discounted price. I found out later that the folks behind the counter can run the card by entering the card number. However, they would need to call the number on the back of the card in order to get authorization. That seems like too much of a hassle for a station that has so much traffic.
The trip from Roadrunner to Dodge city was not great from a miles per gallon perspective. I believe we got about 10.6 mpg. That is traveling at around 65 the majority of the trip. If you think Oklahoma is flat, well that’s just the east side of it. Our trip became quite hilly and scenic as we traveled in northern Oklahoma. I’m certain that also had a negative impact on the mileage.
I can’t complain too much because to put this into perspective, my 1500 would probably have gotten less than 8 mpg at that speed. So, the 2500 diesel is much better from a fuel perspective.
We arrived at the Dodge City KOA at about 2:45. The folks here are great, and they allowed us to stay an extra day due to the upcoming weather. Now we can wait out the Friday winds and tow safely. As you will see in Part 2 of this trip, the wind forecast changes, and not for the better.
The Dodge City KOA, is probably one of the nicest KOA’s we have stayed at with one exception. More about that in the next post. Stay tuned for part 2!
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