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Published: March 19th 2023
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Before I start on today’s events, I want to do some catchup comments about the previous two days. As you are probably aware, the US is famous for the plethora of billboards. A couple I noticed were in Missouri. The first was a very irritating advert about Uranus. What’s so unusual about that you ask? Well, there’s a big candy store called Uranus and the billboards (so many of them!) asked “ Can’t find Uranus?” or “The Best Fudge is in Uranus”. I certainly didn’t feel the urge to visit that store and was happy to see the last of the billboards. It seems Missouri has a very modern attitude towards drugs. The first ad I saw was “Mushrooms - for the psychedelic curious” and the next one was for “Rock Joints” (not marijuana - not sure what they were but it sounded pretty serious).
I’ve been in 4 states now - Michigan, Indiana, Missouri and Oklahoma. Each one is so different: Michigan is just like Ontario, Indiana was flat and open (remember the buffeting winds?), Missouri immediately changed to rolling hills and plentiful trees and Oklahoma is really flat and wide open for miles - you can literally see
at least 15 miles in the distance. The land in Oklahoma is stained a deep reddish orange by iron oxide. The river banks are bright orange and the water in the creeks and ponds is an opaque deep orange.
Remember that wind? I was still fighting that biting cold buffeting wind today. I thought by now I would have driven past or beyond it but it is still blowing from the north right off a glacier. It wasn’t as bad as yesterday but still enough hard punches to knock off the cruise control quite regularly. It’s 6:30 right now in the campground and it is the first time it isn’t frigid cold outside - the wind has eased off and it actually is quite nice out. It will get down below freezing again tonight though.
Speaking of campgrounds, the one I thought I was going to stay at turned out to be a disaster. Thank goodness there was no one in the office and I drove around to look at the sites. I decided I would stay in a hotel if I had to rather than a slum RV park that looked like people actually lived there year
round. Asking in a gas station if there was an RV park nearby I was sent to a really nice campground that looks quite new. Large concrete slabs to park on and nice new brick buildings for the office and washroom. Things always seem to work out the right way, don’t they?
What did I see today that was interesting? Still seeing the white flowering trees and daffodils, but am starting to see redbud trees opening up their purple blossoms. In western Missouri and in Oklahoma there are oil wells. Most of the land I am travelling through is scrub or pasture with plenty of beef cows, not seeing much in the way of cash crops. I drove through several territories of native American peoples: Cherokee, Sac & Fox, Kickapoo, Cheyenne and Arapahoe. Anywhere I stop there are mostly native people working in the stores. Their lands seem to be prosperous and healthy which is wonderful considering the dreadful history that was forced on them. I had a little extra time today so I stopped at the Cherokee Trading Post which is basically a large gift shop with everything you can imagine related to native people. Much of the
kitschy stuff was made in China but there was beautiful jewellery, clothing and artwork as well. And the usual touristy stuff outside like the buffalo statues and a couple of real buffalo.
I am following along the old Route 66 but staying on the throughways for now to make time. I did travel the old Route 66 in 2015 when I rode my motorcycle through to California so I saw a lot of it then. Tomorrow I will be in New Mexico if all goes as well as it has been so far.
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