Tuesday, July 01, 2014

Driving to Texas, But First Oklahoma

It only took a couple of days in Neosho for us to stop and say "hey, why aren't we on an awesome road trip right now?!" Why indeed. To the road! We had plenty of free days to burn, so we decided to make it a long one: San Antonio. Clocking in at over 10 hours, I believe this to be our longest drive yet.




Well before we even thought about Texas we needed to navigate the unknown Oklahoma. What kind of place would it be?

The first of two things that I learned about OK is that there are a lot of Native Americans. There were all sorts of road signs indicating we were leaving or entering this or that nation's land. I'm sure we saw the word for "welcome" written in about 5 languages along the way. There were welcome centers, and city halls, and casinos.

We didn't stop at even one casino along the way. That's a little thing called willpower.


We stopped at this incredibly cheap little diner, The Dairy Snack, that looked nice and quaint. The bill was embarrassingly low despite us even buying dessert.


The second thing I learned about Oklahoma is that it is full of toll roads, and the toll system is a nightmare. You drive up to the window, and a surly attendant barks "Tulsa?" or "Some other place I don't remember?" and you have to pick one. Huh? Then you prepay based on your answer. Or sometimes based on your answer you press a button on a machine which gives you a ticket. Which you then have to keep and give to the next toll booth who will tell you how much you owe. You better keep your receipt though, because depending on what exit you take you will then be given a refund. A refund at a toll booth! Oklahoma has officially created the biggest mess of a toll system ever devised. On one occasion I was scolded by one attendant because I took a ticket from the machine instead of prepaying with the attendant working at our entry toll booth. He spoke to me in a tone which indicated I had just slapped his mother. Boo Oklahoma, boo.


There was a giant warrior guarding this gas station.


Well some other things happened during a really long drive that weren't interesting and eventually we made it to Austin, Texas where we stopped for the night. Ta Daa!

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