Aruba with my friends...

Another lovely sunset.

Cowboys, Indians and Casinos

We had two rooms last night and all of us slept well without one having to sleep on an uncomfortable sofa bed.  We have taken turns so that nobody gets stuck all the time.  We decided to detour to go a little north so we could hit Route 66 and visit the Rock Café at Stroud, Ok where Cars, Toy  Story and many other movies were filmed.  It turned out to be a great stop and we had a great lunch there too.  We decided that Oklahoma and Arkansas were the hardest parts of the drive because there was so much driving with literally nothing to look at.  Sandra will enjoy the street sign as when I was working we learned of the Kickapoo Indians from our Tulsa friends.   The scenery was the same and few billboards to comment on or look at.  We did pass many Indian properties in east Oklahoma and many had casinos.  We did stop at one on the boarder of Arkansas which was a Cherokee Nation Casino.  We got $15 of their money to play with and we played for about an hour.  Once back in the car we decided we needed an afternoon treat of ice cream and Kay found one called the Dari-Delite which was in the tiny town of Ozark, Arkansas.  We find it on main street and had so much fun there just listening to the elderly folks that live there talk about everything they were seeing out the windows to greens and butter beans.  We can only imagine what they had to say about us when we left but it was a fun and amusing stop.  After another two hours of monotonous driving we finally arrived at The Residence Inn in Little Rock.  Tonight was the night we had decided we would clean out the van as we had been putting our purchases along the way in two boxes that Debbie had brought.  When we got them all in there it was horrifying to see how much we had to try to pack to get it home.  Yikes.  We ordered Chinese in and had our last bottle of wine together.  It is hard to believe we will be in Memphis tomorrow and then it's over.  We were talking the in car today and we have done so many things that we have to read the blog to remember what we did and when.  We have traveled 4,500 miles as of tonight and been to Tennessee, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas...14 states!

Roads that disappeared into the sky...

This was someone's front yard with a space ship in it?

We thought this was funny...just a store!

Kay and Debbie

Kay's Indian Tacos

I thought this was funny...

More corn....

A seahorse?

We have one of these in Alabama

This was right next to the lake below...we laughed.

Coaches and Sooners

We hated to leave Dodge City even though the slogan is "get the hell out of Dodge".  The room we had at Hampton was probably the nicest any of us have stayed.  We hit the road and see more cattle until we hit the Oklahoma state line then the terrain was so boring that we had a hard time keeping each other awake or finding things to comment on.  There was just miles of nothing...not even corn!  How can this be?  There has been corn in every state so far but here.  We passed a couple small towns that were like ghost towns and it was sad to see.  Finally about 20 miles outside of Oklahoma City we started seeing cattle ranches and farms again and then civilization.  We stopped at the Outlet Mall so Debbie could make a stop at the Coach store and we had lunch there at Smashburger.  We left there and went to downtown to see the Memorial for the federal building bombing.  It was a beautiful and moving memorial.  We got there at 4:30 PM and if it was Atlanta we would have never been able to get out of there at that time of day but we had no problem.  We stopped at a Walmart on the way to the hotel and we are now settled and getting ready to have dinner at a pasta place across the parking lot.  Tomorrow it is on to Little Rock and then Memphis then home.  I found out after getting on FB tonight that we were at Rocky Mountain National Park the same day as my friend Dave and his wife and family.....sorry I missed you Dave!

Wind sculpture outside Hampton was pretty
 

Chainsaw tree we found amusing....

More of these in OK than any other place we saw.
 

We think this may have been a church but found the doors every interesting.
 

The bank and drug store in the same deserted town
 

The post office was still operating.
 

Amber waves of grain...

Oklahoma City

Lots of wall murals in downtown were very interesting.

Where the Oklahoma City Bombing Ocurred

The Memorial is Beautiful