Tuesday - July 5 2022 Savannah TN to Radford VA

Work day today, going for some miles. Drive-coffee-drive-coffee......

The family that owned the hotel last night treated us to fireworks in the parking lot outside our room. Gotta love small towns..

For 10 years or so I have told my wife that I have never been to a Taco Bell. Well today was the day to check that one off the list. I'll tell you tomorrow how it was..

Gas dropped to as low as #3.99 today in Tennessee but as soon as we crossed into Virginia, it was back to $4.49. Rained for a couple hours but other than that, not much excitement, just turning the steering wheel all day..

Monday - July 4, 2022 - Collierville TN to Savannah TN

 

Not much driving but lots of visiting today. Great hotel last night and 1.5 hr drive to Tom and Kim's (Deb's brother & sister in law). They moved to Tennessee last year and we needed to stop by and get a tour. The bonus was finally meeting their grand kids, Victoria and Luca and their mom Franka. Their grandkids were visiting from Germany and what great kids. They are of course bi-lingual, which always amazes me how they just switch back and forth. 

Their house is wonderful with high ceilings and a good size yard. They live right next to a golf course (they have their own golf cart) and Tom is a huge golfer so the perfect place. There is also a huge reservoir 5 minutes away and Kim's sister and her husband have a boat. They have settled into their new neighborhood and Kim already has a part time retirement job while Tom still has his engraving business. 

Kim made a big lunch for us and then Kim took us for a tour of the surrounding area and we met her sister Pam and her husband Phil who have a self built house on the Pickwick reservoir behind the Pickwick dam built by the TVA.

Good to catch up and see the new digs. Off to Savannah TN (not GA), small supper and bed. 

Sunday - July 3 2022 - to McAlester OK to Collierville TN

 

Longer day today, but we did manage to take the scenic route. Nice hotel and pretty good breakfast with real scrambled eggs, not those instant ones, wherever they come from.

Our daughter had been through here some years back in her year of car wandering and recommended the south east corner of Oklahoma. Deb poked around and found the Talimena Scenic Byway (AKA Rt 1) which feels just like the Blue Ridge Parkway. Who knew this part of Oklahoma and Arkansas were so beautiful?

Today marked the first day of "real green" landscape. Kinda weird seeing water running under all the bridges. We are so used to dry washes back in Arizona.

The Byway starts in Oklahoma and ends in Arkansas. It was built in the 1960's and sure looks like a tourist attracter (is that a word?), as well it should be. Talihina is the town near the west end and Mena is the town it ends at in Arkansas. In the Choctaw language Tali means "iron" and hina means "road", which is what they called the railroad that went through. There was a resort built in 1898 near the Byway named after Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands to attract tourists (to ride the new train), but it flopped and it stood empty for 60 years. They rebuilt it as part of the Queen Wilhelmina State Park in 1963, it burned 10 years later and they rebuilt it again in 1975. The Dutch connection is from some Dutch investors in the railroad.

Lots of coffee breaks but pretty much nose to the steering wheel all day.  

A note on gas prices. When we left Bisbee, gas was $4.99 per gallon and we filled up in NM the same day at $4.45. It has been $4.35 to $4.45 the last 4 days and today we got gas for $4.29. Hmmmm.

Dinner at a local pizza place. Tomorrow we make it to Deb's brother's place in Tennessee.

Saturday - July 2 2022 - Oklahoma City OK to McAlester OK

We did not intend to spend the whole day in Oklahoma City but the museums sucked us in, in a good way. We were trying to decide between the Cowboy Museum or the First American Museum. The Cowboy Museum opened first (10:00) so we decided on it. Since they were opening so late, we decided to see downtown. No traffic, Saturday morning, and free easy parking. They have a nice walkable downtown park area with a splash park for the kids and a farmers market. Lots of dog walkers and lots of soaking wet kids, perfect for these 90+ degree days with 90+% humidity. Lots of vendors of mostly arts, crafts and a few veggie and fresh meat folks. Good chance to sample local beers (at 9am!?!?). It was a chance to get a good walk in as well since we have been in the car for three days. They also had these cool misters that created a huge fog bank you could walk through to cool off. Very clean and tidy. 

We then drove down to the Oklahoma City bombing site where they have a memorial. We didn't stop but wanted to at least see the memorial.. Sad..

OK, now to the Cowboy Museum. We got there 10 minutes after it opened and the parking lot was packed. We did get a spot way down back and a shuttle bus stopped to pick us up (we declined) and we asked what was going on. There was a "Red Earth Festival" at the museum this weekend where a huge gathering of Native Americans (First Americans as we later found out) were having dancing, crafts, art and exhibits. We lucked out and got a two for one deal. The place was busy but most were there for the Red Earth event so we got to do the Cowboy Museum exhibits with a manageable crowd and saw most of the Red Earth folks as well. We saw one of the dance performances but standing room only. 

The Cowboy Museum was huuuge! Somewhere between the tribal history, the ranch history, the hat, boot, and saddle history, the branding iron and barbed wire (1300 kinds!) collection, the Remington, Russell and Audubon pictures and sculptures, the movie stars and movie exhibits, and the farm equipment and firearm collections, we reached saturation. We staggered out of there and went to, you guessed it, another museum.

The First Americans Museum (FAM), is a brand new, beautiful museum (where do they get all the $$ to build these beautiful concrete and glass museums??). It is good sized but much smaller than the Cowboy Museum. We bought our tickets (senior rate!!) and immediately  went to the cafe and sat for a few minutes to decompress. Nice lunch and then into the museum. This museum tells the western history from the Native American point of view. They prefer to be called First Americans, hence the museum name. They were after all, here first. It is beautifully presented and very well done. Dozens of tribes were in North America for centuries, well balanced with resources, sustainable. The cultures of the new European and the First Americans were so mutually foreign, everything went crazy. The new diseases wiped out 90% of the First Americans (18 million to 300,000 in a few decades) and the difference in technologies (weapons) finished them off. Treaty after treaty was signed and broken until the remaining First Americans were assimilated and/or put on reservations. After decades of attempts to win back some autonomy, they have reached a balance between living in the modern world (I did not say better) and still keeping their traditions alive.

OK, we spent the whole day in Oklahoma City and there is even more to do here, but we gotta head east. Deb found a hotel a couple of hours east of us in McAlester OK. Dinner at a local diner (all day breakfast is the way to go) and then crash.

Friday - July 1 2022 - Amarillo TX to Oklahoma City OK

 

Today's rule was no highway and no tolls. OK has some funky toll roads. I have bad memories of shoving dollar bills (unsuccessfully) into little slots with the wind howling a few years back and swearing never to take another Oklahoma toll road.

Hotel breakfast was so-so but free. Lots of families travelling for July 4th. The kids always zero in on hotel pools and tired parents can't wait to wear them down to a nub and put them to bed, squeaky clean (as I remember anyway..).  Our first stop today was the Museum of the Great Plains in Lawton OK.  In 1901 or so the US government and the Kiowa, Apache and Comanche tribes agreed that the Indians would move to reservations. The US government then had a lottery to give away 160 acre parcels of land to settlers. Thousands signed up and the entire area became a sea of tents in 1901. The railroad arrived in 1902 and it did not take more than 10-15 years for brick buildings and farmland to be established. Amazing.

The museum focuses on the centuries of the Indians being here and then the explosion of settlers, then the drought cycle(s) that sent everyone off to California, then the modern scientific knowledge that hopefully will allow things to settle down. 

We spent the day rattling up smaller 2 lane roads, driving through beat up towns long past their expiration dates (with some exceptions). Some of these town have pretty little downtowns with most of the businesses gone. Big farms eat up all the small farms.

The next museum was the Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center right next door. It was 98-101 all day so even the short walk was kind of miserable. The museum is small but very high quality. Exhibits on how the children were raised, the roles of men and women, and the transition into the modern world help this white boy understand what these folks have had to go through.

The museum even has resident Prairie Dogs thumbing their noses at you as you walk around.

Next stop was Medicine Park just outside of Lawson. This town was created in 1908 as a resort and you can see why. Beautiful water and the tiny town is full of cobblestone houses and these days lots of tourist stuff.

Then we had a failed search for Geronimo's grave. It turns out, it is on Fort Sill's land and you need a pass. Google Maps took us right up to the fence blocking the way. If only I had wire cutters I'd have a picture of his grave, but there would probably not be wifi in the Army brig, so no picture in the blog either way.

Our next failed attempt was to see the giant Lady Leg Lamp in Chickasha OK. We think they removed the inflatable one to replace it with a more permanent one. You go Chickasha!!

We ended the day just outside Oklahoma City, walked to a local place with great salads (in the 98 degree heat). No idea where we are going tomorrow..

Thursday - June 30, 2022 - Roswell NM to Amarillo TX

 

Hotel breakfast in Roswell, even though we could have gone next door to the alien Dunkin place. 

Today we focused on all of those roads that nobody drives on. A lot of long lonely stretches with absolutely nothing on them. And it was kind of lovely.  The first stop today was Bosque Redondo Memorial at the Fort Sumner Historic Site. Why the hell has nobody heard of this? In 1863-66 or so the US Military marched thousands of Navajo and Apache people from their native lands hundreds of miles to Fort Sumner. At its peak they had 9000 Native Americans there. It was a failure because there was bad water, no food (the Union had a hard time feeding their soldiers during the Civil War to begin with), and they consumed all the wood within a 20 mile radius in a short time. At the end of the Civil War, General Sherman came down and saw what a disgrace it was. They agreed on a peace treaty and let the Navajo and Apache people walk back home. I know these were different times but..

Seems every town has to grab onto something to lure the tourists in. Tombstone has "Gunfight at the OK Coral", Roswell has the "Alien Incident of 1947", and Fort Sumner has Billy the Kid. In the 1990's some Navajo high school kids wrote a letter asking why the town promoted Billy The Kid (killed 8 people and was hung at age 21) and nobody talked about the 9000 people imprisoned there. So they built a very nice memorial there. One of those places that is uncomfortable to visit, but is important to visit. 

Next stop Tucumcari, which is a RT 66 town full of 60's stuff and a great little railroad museum. The railroad arrived in 1902 and the town was established in 1901. It was the turn around point for the Rock Island line and the railroad that went on to Los Angeles. So the town was basically created for the railroad.

At its peak in the 1950's, there were 7 trains a day meeting there. But as the interstate road system was built and air travel got more popular, passenger train travel slowed and the town dried up. It is still a great little tourist town.

Next we took more back roads and stopped at a wind farm. The guy working there came out and we talked about the history of wind turbines. Turned out he used a lot of the sensors I helped developed back in my NRG Systems days, specifically the IceFree wind speed and direction sensors. Small world indeed.

Hotel and then dinner at a popular hole in the wall burger place. Heading to Oklahoma City next..

Wednesday - June 29, 2022 - Bisbee AZ to Roswell NM

 

I had not planned on blogging this trip but here I am. The second night I realized this trip might not be so much a drive back east trip, but rather a meander back east trip. So this one is from yesterday, Wednesday, if I can remember what we did..

A few last minute things to put in the car (so far no panic attacks because we forgot something), then south on 80 to Douglas and back northeast to Lordsburg on I-10. We stopped for gas, which was a lot cheaper ($4.99 in Bisbee and $4.49 in Lordsburg), then back on I-10 and a stop for lunch (Subway) in Deming. My playlist, Deb's playlist and a couple of podcasts burned up the day. Las Cruces, then Rt 70 to White Sands, past the giant pistachio in Alamogordo (thank you spell checker),  Ruidoso (spell checker did not know that one), then ended the day in Roswell. Dinner at Cattle Barons Steakhouse (nice salad bar). 

We saw the most beautiful cloud formations all day. We even got a little rain here and there.
We are getting back in the groove of one drives and the other does the research. 

There is a database (hmdb.org) of all the roadside history signs that I never stop to read so we can look them up as we drive along. Super helpful because it gives us a snap shot of any historical events that happened "on this spot in the year xxxx". It has a map showing any past or upcoming signs.

roadsideamerica is where you can look up weird stuff like "biggest ball of yarn" or "tallest stack of file cabinets".  A website or an app.

Wikipedia is where we get info on the history of any towns we drive through. It lists important people from there (John Denver is from Roswell), what businesses put it on the map, what scandals happened.

OK, that's all I remember from yesterday..