Hugo, Oklahoma

Talk about small town. Hugo, Oklahoma owned that description. Located only 2.5 hours north of Dallas, and home of the Endangered Ark Foundation. It has also adopted the nick-name of “Circus City”. Our understanding is that the circus would winter here on the off-season… which leads to the whole reason why we arrived here: The Elephants!

The Endangered Ark Foundation is home to a herd of resting circus elephants! They have opened their doors to visitors for up-close encounters – and since they have been a love of mine since I was yay-high…. we thought it would start our trip off nicely!

We reserved their “private encounter”. We arrived around 11:15am and were led to the first room. Here we watched them drink, splash (and be splashed), and were shown some fun tricks. We then moved to watching them paint, scratched their ears, took some pictures, and scrubbed them down.

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We learned about their 4 large teeth and all about their trunks, the things they eat and how the foundation grooms their nails.

We then took a tractor ride around the grounds and saw all of the elephants enjoying the outdoors! We then made a stop to feed two of them banana chunks and have a fun photo op.

We were given an elephant foot painting to take home, along with a postcard picture of her!

I may have been in HEAVEN! (And maybe embarrassing to my family by my squeals. LOL)

We came home, napped, and then took our new inflatable boat out on the lake. It was quite windy so this required some heavy rowing, but we all had some good laughs.

I would stop at the Endangered Ark Foundation again, in a heartbeat! They did an excellent job, and we all greatly enjoyed ourselves.

The RV Park we stayed at was Sawyer RV Park, near the lake. It was an interesting location but was owned by a very sweet lady. She shared her goats and chickens with the kids, which was great fun for all.

Now…. on to Kansas!