JACKS RV & Mercantile

09/19/2026

Come on in for fresh blueberry muffins and chocalt4e chip cookies. Enjoy with some fresh brewed coffee.

09/18/2026

09/13/2026

Every summer evening at dusk, millions of Mexican free-tailed bats pour out of a single cave in northwestern Oklahoma in one of the most extraordinary natural spectacles on the continent. The Selman Bat Cave near Freedom puts on a show that has to be seen to be believed — and most Oklahomans have no idea it exists. Have you ever witnessed a bat emergence like this one?

09/13/2026

Every September and October, something remarkable happens on a stretch of flat white earth in northwestern Oklahoma. 🦅 Hundreds of thousands of migratory shorebirds — American avocets, Wilson's phalaropes, long-billed dowitchers, and dozens more species — touch down on the Great Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge near Cherokee, using the ancient salt flat as a stopover on the Central Flyway.

The salt flats themselves predate the birds. This is a remnant of an inland sea — a Permian-era formation that left behind sodium-rich deposits now exposed across roughly 11,000 acres of the refuge. The white surface, wet in places and bone-dry in others, looks like something out of the Southwest, except you're looking at Kay County, Oklahoma.

In addition to the migration spectacle, the refuge offers one of the strangest digging experiences in the country: families can sift the shallow sandy fringe of the reservoir for naturally occurring hourglass selenite crystals, a tradition that draws people from across the country. There's nothing quite like it anywhere else. 🔮

09/12/2026

Updated Schedule for September 19 event.
10:00am registration for storm chaser and car show.

08/26/2026

There is a place in northwestern Oklahoma where you can dig up crystals with your bare hands, and almost nobody outside the state knows it exists. 💎 The Great Salt Plains State Park near Jet, Oklahoma sits atop an ancient sea bed where hourglass selenite crystals form naturally in the red clay just beneath a white salt crust, and visitors are allowed to dig up and keep up to three pounds of them per day. It is one of only two places on earth where this particular crystal formation occurs.

The crystals themselves are remarkable. ✨ Selenite is a form of gypsum, and the hourglass crystals here get their name from the reddish-brown hourglass pattern trapped inside the translucent mineral — formed as the crystal grew around clay inclusions suspended in the ancient brine. Each one is slightly different, ranging from thumbnail size to a few inches long, and you find them by digging maybe six inches down into the wet clay of the designated digging area with nothing more than a trowel and a bucket of water.

The park surrounds Great Salt Plains Lake, a shallow reservoir that draws enormous flocks of migratory shorebirds and is one of the best birding spots in the southern plains. 🦅 Whooping cranes, white pelicans, and dozens of shorebird species stop here during migration, which means on the right day you can dig crystals in the morning and watch rare birds in the afternoon. It is the kind of Oklahoma experience that sounds made up until you're standing there in the salt with a crystal in your hand.

08/25/2026

Exciting News!
Check out our new accommodations available now! Labor day is around the corner and hunting season is upon us.

Call us directly, stop by the RV park or use any link below to reserve your stay.

https://resnexus.com/resnexus/reservations/book/34B80DC8-5DAC-4DA3-8064-F13276B4A9B1/?NewSearch=1

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1757367698489558529?adults=2&check_in=2026-09-08&check_out=2026-09-09&guests=2&search_mode=regular_search&source_impression_id=p3_1787664506_P371ccW-Z8TaSvXp&previous_page_section_name=1000&federated_search_id=47006888-e489-4e36-91fa-c6df6d3fc9f5