We had a very nice dinner last night. I’m working on curtailing my food ordering because I just do not need that much food. I’m beginning to long for a homecooked meal.
This morning in Joplin, we had some Mother Nature time before we had Mother Road time. We visited, and photographed, Grand Falls a bit south of Joplin. It is the largest waterfall in Missouri. Then we went to the Wildcat Glades and Audubon Center, a lovely nature center with fun displays and lots of trails that Dennis did not want to walk. I especially liked the entrance to the nature center. They have planted extensive gardens with native wildflowers. It helped us capture the peace of a natural setting. We needed that for our next adventure.
Dennis and I talked about Joplin and commented on the fact that we had not seen any of the tornado damage. We both felt that it would be crude and insensitive to ask people where the damaged area was. We found it by accident as we were driving up to the historic Rte 66 starting point for this day.
All of a sudden we were surrounded with roof-less buildings and bare ground where buildings once stood. The damage was stunning. It left us speechless – except for the occasional “oh my God – this is awful.” The people of Joplin are obviously tough – they still live there – and they are re-building, but it was so numbingly sad. The damage was so complete and indiscriminate. We sent prayers up for the community and we were really glad that we had stopped there.
Once we hopped on the road our first stop on Rte 66 was at State Line Road to photograph the sign as we entered Kansas. There are only 13 miles of Rte 66 in Kansas but they pack in the picturesque refurbished buildings. We did not, however, stop in Kansas. We traveled on to Oklahoma.
Remember the chorus from the song? “Oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plains.” The wind comes sweeping because there is absolutely nothing to stop it! Missouri was rolling and tree covered. Oklahoma is really quite flat. There are lots of ranches and hay. We drove through many miles of rural vistas. But we had to stop at Afton.
We drove by and came back to the Afton Station, a very nicely restored DX gas station. We went inside and struck up a conversation with Phil who was working there. He told us about the station and the cars – a collection of Packards. We went into the display area and began shooting pix like crazy. I hope Dennis posts the best ones. It is an amazing and beautiful collection of cars. Really – that’s when cars were CARS!
Then we drove toward some towns we were really looking forward to seeing – Bushyhead and Claremore. This is a shout out to Lisa G. and Kelli F. and all of the folks who were in the Howell Community Theater production of Oklahoma. Bushyhead (“I just come from there.”) is gone! We tried to find it and found a street sign (picture) and some very Deliverance-like settings. There were falling down houses and a few pick-up trucks and a few men who clearly knew that we (the folks in the shiny black Honda) were strangers. Dennis agreed that we should not stop so I just snapped a photo of the street sign. My how Bushyhead has changed! And Claremore – everything is definitely up to date there! We searched for the Lynn Riggs memorial (a story by Lynn Riggs inspired the musical) and found the remnants. The original Surrey with the Fringe on Top was supposed to be there at the museum, but there was no surrey in evidence. We took a picture of the site and the sign. We saw the banner saying a new museum would be open soon and that things had been moved. We followed directions and still no surrey. Imagine our disappointment! We really wanted the pictures of those two towns.
We headed on into Tulsa for our final challenge of the day – finding a hotel. Now I know you think that this could not be too hard, after all, Tulsa is a large city with lots of hotels. But, if you come into town on historic Rte 66 you do not see lots of hotels. You see lots of declining neighborhoods. We drove all across the city and finally – after taking an ill-advised turn – we turned around and drove back into the city on highways. We know that all of the hotels are near freeways! We found a La Quinta that is clean and seems reasonable. We need to remember to do the hotel search in a more organized fashion. We were also hampered by the lack of a good Oklahoma map. Tomorrow we will try to find one and we will probably stop at one of the two Rte 66 museums.
Our hotel has laundry facilities. This is good because our laundry is piling up! Happy trails to you and to tomorrow!
Love the shout out!
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