According to my route guide, the journey from Springfield, Mo to Oklahoma City is the longest of my route at 285 miles. It also claims that it can be done in 4 and a half hours. Given this means you would have to travel at a constant 63.33 miles an hour, this is fairly unrealistic for an American freeway never mind following the old Route 66!I didn't help myself in this by missing a turning at one point early on and therefore running a slightly different route for the first half of the journey. This meant I missed Joplin, which has recently been hit by a major tornado, so probably it was just as well I stayed out of their way. Unfortunately this also meant the small corner of Kansas cut by Route 66 - good job I said at the start I wasn't being completest!
Back on Route 66 in Oklahoma, it actually ran as a "proper" road for most of the way, by which I meant it wasn't just an old road following a modern road but an actual state road. I crossed on to the historic road through a trip through Tulsa (took maybe 5 hours, rather than 24!) but then found my way back onto the 66. Oklahoma was generally a bit flatter than Missouri had been, with some more farmland, but still was a bit up and down.
Towards Oklahoma City came Pops (see above) a diner with over 500 different types of fizzy drink to choose from. I had what was meant to be a spicy ginger beer (slightly disappointing unfortunately) and an Apple Cobbler. (EVENING UPDATE - a picture of the Pops bottle was used as the background on the evening weather report on KFOR and apparently it lights up at night and cycles through different colours!)
Overall, with stops the journey took closer to 8 hours. Just to add to the fun of it there were roadworks around the hotel meaning that I had to do a few loops to find where to park!
No comments:
Post a Comment