Tuesday, December 18, 2012

TX, OK, and MO

Texas was unremarkable for the little piece that we drove through on I-40. Gas was a bit more expensive here than in NM. Mostly flat alternating with almost flat. Notable city: Amarillo. (Mama: Ah-mah-REE-yo)

Oklahoma. This is about as far away as Broadway as it gets. Oklahoma seems to have a patron saint, Will Rogers. I have never seen Will Roger's films or work so I don't know much other than my uncle was a big fan of his (my old Uncle Joe Rusnak, may he rest in peace, whose old homestead is now the site of Chardon's first and only municipal park.)

We seemed to drive through a whole lot of Indian reservations. I got to thinking that the natives of this continent really got the shaft. They once owned the whole place and now have been forcibly relocated into the least prime real estate available at the time, where poverty is now the rule rather than the exception.

The interesting part of this was that driving through a Kickapoo reservation, Mama commented that there is another Kickapoo reservation near her hometown in Sonora, Mexico. Apparently the folks who are born in the reservation there have full rights and citizenship of the US. Who would have imagined?

Oklahoma's notable cities: Oklahoma City, Tulsa.

On to Missouri, just missing Kansas and Arkansas (no comment).

It was dark by the time we got anywhere into MO but not far after Joplin we could still get the sense that it was becoming gorgeous. Tree-covered mountains and highways that curved up and down and around them. Maybe we will get to see more of this state on the way back. We stopped to look for a place to stay in Rolla, had the feel and pricing of a resort town. Luckily we found a nice and reasonable place just a few minutes farther down the road, about an hour before St. Louis.

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