Springfield to Tulsa

Well what a day.....a really good day on the road. Plenty of miles , plenty of weather, plenty of sights and some special experiences. We started off early with our Best Western breakfast....Donna felt right at home as we had all disposable crockery and cutlery. The help yourself buffet breakfast was typical American fare you could do your own waffles in the waffle maker....there was yoghurt and fruit pots, cereal, donuts, toast, sausage, scrambled eggs, potatoes, biscuits and gravy. Well I have wanted to know what biscuits and gravy were for breakfast and now I do......biscuits are a light fluffy savoury scone and the gravy is a seasoned herbed white sauce, I really enjoyed them. After breaky thought we should try Skype.... Got hold of Dad and had a conversation and then managed to get Elle on with some snags but we managed a chat before we were cut off.
Well we knew exactly where we were going this morning so straight off........in the wrong direction for 10 miles.......Ah well we soon put that right and we were on the right route again. Donna had been nagging me to get petrol but I had insisted we go to Gay Parita in

Paris Springs only 10 or 15 miles down the road...add on the extra 15 miles we have done to start lol. First stop was The Whitehall Mercantile at Halltown. A decaying old barn from one side with tidier sections on the frontage and other side. Dr White the owner was keen to greet us, make jokes and talk. The Place is full of all sorts of things..... Some may say junk others might say treasures yet to be discovered, I am sure that you know which camp I am in! Nevertheless we purchase a couple of small items and bid Dr White farewell even as we are leaving he asks Donna "what happened to his hair?" he cracked up as she responded that she had rubbed it all away. Well the Gay Parita gas station was just 3 miles down the road and Donna keeps glancing at the petrol gauge. Well when we arrived it was everything we expected a vintage gas station with extra cars, a garage of interesting memorabilia, a small gift shop a friendly host....perfect..... Except that I had managed to miss the word replica....from the description Donna is not at all happy!
George the proprietor was charming and keen to tell you what he is in the middle of improving and the other plans for the future. He has taken over the business from his father in law who was much loved and unfortunately died last year. Whilst at the gas station it got very dark and all of a sudden the sky's opened. The rain was very heavy indeed for about 5 mins we entertained ourselves in the garage of memorabilia. When it had passed we got a couple of small items from George's gift shop he gave us some free postcards, to spread the word, and offered us bottled water to see us on our way. We continued down the route, Donna had calmed down a little as George had told us there was an actual gas station just about 10 miles further along the route....he also told us not to take the 96 as most do but stay on the "god damned road" clearly passionate about the Mother Road. Well we found the Gas Station and filled up $21.25 this time. This section of Route 66 has many houses or businesses that have just been left to rot away it is a real eye opener, all of these families who had given up when times became hard after the arrival of the Interstate.
Well if you thought that the number of trailer parks and the number of people who live on them was exaggerated on TV you would be......... wrong! We have seen so many so far including Paradise yesterday. However today was a real eye opener....Some of the parks we have seen today would make Jaywick look like St George Hill, If that is the name of the Estate Doryce and Pete lived on in Surrey, the are honestly that grim.
So far we have seen plenty of roadkill rabbits, badgers 5 Deer, squirrels but the most interesting was today when I am sure we saw 2 x Armadillos. We nearly also saw a dead Tortoise but I managed to drive around it.
We continued down the road to Carthage we got out for a wander and stopped at The Pancake Hut for a Waffle and a coffee very nice too.

Continuing down the road we hit the stormy weather again, earlier the weather went from 84 F to a lovely 71F when it rained but back up to 84F within 15 mins. This time we saw the rain approaching us with an unforgiving black sky and rumbles of thunder and the odd flash of lightning. I don't think I have ever driven in such torrential rain I had to slow to 25 miles an hour I had the windscreen wipers on max and I still could only just see.. Except for when one of those huge American trucks blasted by and sent a 6' tidal wave over us, I couldn't see at all then. Conditions were that bad that I am not sure if Donna was praying or crying. Temperatures did exactly what they did earlier dropped whilst it was raining then rising rapidly as it dried up.
Later we made a rare detour off of Route 66 to see the Totem Pole Park. We were there taking some snaps when a guy started talking to us and tellling us that his older sister had painted all of the Totem including the main pole which was over 100 feet tall. It transpired that the lady had done this about 2 years ago when she was STILL in her 70's she was disappointed that they wouldn't get more scaffolding so she couldn't do the top 15 or twenty feet. She was very informative of how it was built etc. Transpired her Granddaughter is at St Andrews University, she was very excited when Donna told her that it was there that Wills met Kate. From here it was down the road to the Blue Whale at Catoose... You can only imagine what a great place this lake was for kids back in the day.
Well we finally arrived at Great Western Tulsa suites the temperature has hit 97F at 7.15pm.We checked in and after two nights of bread and soup we haven't had chance to replenish our supplies so eating out it is. Just across the car park is Ruby Tuesday, this place has the most amazing salad bar ever according to Donna and I have to say the food was faultless. So a nice meal and a couple of beers and it's back and time to settle down. While I remember sign of the day today was this one seen just after the Blue Whale on the lake at Catoose, "Spunkey Creek Keep It Clean" On that tasteful note, given I have now driven over 900 miles and am feeling weary, I shall say goodnight.