We got started later than intended, but when isn’t that a fact with the two of us. We always get a late start on any major expedition. I might have helped had we already had luggage, but we didn’t, so we had to go buy some. Well, now we have a nice set of luggage! Then Lin decided to add a dead bolt lock to the front door, and he did something to the truck, but eventually … we got on the road.
Getting out of Texas is always a pain. It’s so … LARGE, and we live right in the middle of it. Doesn’t matter what direction we go, it’s always a while before we can officially say we are out of the state. I always joke that getting out of Texas is the longest part of any road trip, but it isn’t much of a joke. Also, there’s not much of Texas I haven’t seen a million times before, so it isn’t a terribly interesting drive either. It’s just what we have to get through to get to the good stuff.
It took three hours to get to Dallas. Dallas, as always, was insane and probably more so from our point of view because it was Friday night and everyone was out and about downtown. Somehow, we screwed up on our exit, but it wasn’t a major crisis … aside from some moron having tossed some live flares into the middle of the access road. What the hell? We got headed in the right direction and went on our merry way. I know everyone always complains about the traffic is cities not their own, but seriously, the drivers in Dallas are INSANE! Speed is definitely the name of the game on their highways. Lots and lots of speed.
Two hours later we somehow missed the Welcome to Oklahoma sign. We thought we were still in Texas, though the ever increasing number of Choctaw casinos should have been a huge clue we weren’t. That and the horrible condition of the highways. It wasn’t until we passed a sign for Caddo-Kennefic† that it dawned on me we’d finally left Texas. Duh. We hadn’t been in Texas for a while.
Eventually we made our first pit stop in a place called McAlester, OK. I was more than ready to get out of the truck and move my body. I was also more than ready for a bathroom break and some more caffeine, and the truck was ready for some gasoline. We could have spent a few minutes more not moving, but Lin is one of those people who likes to go, go, go and not stop, so as soon as all our immediate needs were taken care of, back on the road we went.
Oklahoma was awful. We’d apparently forgotten when deciding which way to head north that the last time we went through Oklahoma the highways were terrible. I don’t even mean slightly terrible or just bad in spots, I mean awful every bumpy inch of the way across the state. Even the tollways were in awful shape. Then there were the skunks. Dead skunks. EVERYWHERE! Maybe if it hadn’t been late at night I would have some other memories of Oklahoma to report, but all I have or you is the roads were hell and the entire trip through the state smelled of dead skunk. We have since decided to never, ever go through Oklahoma again. Never … ever.
I settled into my seat for a nap, which didn’t go so well thanks to the bumpity-thumpity roads and skunk stench, but I did my best. The next time I paid attention to where we were, there was some uncertainty about whether or not we’d missed the turnpike we were looking for. You see, between the two of us, all we had was one scrap of paper with the highways we needed to be on and a PDF I made of the Google Maps turn-by-turn directions. No actual maps to speak of. None. Not a problem, so long as all the correct turns are made, but not having a map of Oklahoma did lead to a brief period of panic about whether or not the correct turnpike was still to come or had already been passed. At about the same moment I decided we hadn’t passed it yet, we came across it. Shortly thereafter, we were a mere 16 miles from the border of Missouri and the dawn of a new day.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Footnotes- † Caddo-Kennefic is now a household in-joke. I said it sounded like a Harry Potter spell, so I spent at least twenty minutes waving around an imaginary wand shouting CADDO_KENNEFIC! Yes, I am five years old, or at least I revert to being five years old while on extremely long road trips. Lin’s just lucky I didn’t start singing the Lora-Lee song I wrote on a family vacation … when I was five years old. LOL! [↩]