Tuesday Oct 8 - Mexico MO to Tulsa OK

I ticked off 3 more states today that the X300 (motorcycle) has not been in. Only one left (Nevada) before I can say this bike has been in all 48 states. It was 46 this morning at dawn and I had a long chat with one of the railroad workers who live in this motel. There were 4 or 5 of them and they were having a good time together. Sounds like they were working on the rail beds and welding rails. They can now just butt two rails together and arc weld them. Much much easier than the previous method that uses magnesium and some special molds and materials. They do them all the time and hope over time to weld everything.
The plan was to go southwest and just scrape through Kansas, then south to Arkansas and then west to Oklahoma, three state the X300 has not been in. It warmed up into the 60's and 70's so perfect with one extra layer underneath. I got kind of tired of Missouri since the landscape is not too exciting. The northern part has big flat fields like Iowa but the rest is kind of all over the place. The small towns are really hurting and some of the 10-20K population towns seem pretty tidy. Joplin MO was actually surprisingly ok, and I crossed into Kansas right next to Joplin. Then south through a kinda pretty curvy set of roads and lots of roller coaster like whoop-dee-dos, kinda fun. As I hit the southeast corner of Missouri and into Arkansas it got kinda creepy, like the kind of place you would not want to be stranded. No cell service, lots of giant barns with signs that said "Farm #21" and the like. No activity, fans running, no cars. Creepy. When I got to Oklahoma I saw signs about stopping the chicken farm pollution in Arkansas from coming into Oklahoma, so it was chickens. Creepy. Then straight west to Tulsa into the sunset. I grabbed the first motel I found and it is not so nice. The kid running the front desk is a computer science major (sophomore) and was cramming for an HTML/CSS exam tomorrow, so he seemed legit. Walked down the street and found a salad bar for dinner. No beer tonight. Nice weather, not much to look at, west tomorrow, maybe Amarillo TX.
Odometer beginning of trip = 35820
Odometer beginning of day = 38165
Odometer end of day = 38578
Miles today = 413
Miles on trip to date = 2758
Travel days = 8
Zero days = 2
Average miles per traveling day = 344