WFRV

Imagine sitting down in a fairly comfortable upholstered chair with your
legs out in front of you. You're in front of an enormous flat screen TV.
There's a DVD playing of land, flat land, acres and acres of it, with some
small deciduous trees and an occasional sprinkling of cattle. The
spaciousness is marred only by the billboards which crop up here and there.
Now imagine watching that DVD for five hours straight. That's my drive
through the Texas panhandle and Oklahoma. It's mind-numbingly boring. We
pass the "largest cross in the western hemisphere" and a wind farm which to
me is far more interesting. Why is there only one wind farm around here?
There's NOTHING ELSE around, and it certainly wouldn't ruin the scenery any
more than the billboards. And what about solar energy? Why isn't the vast
flat uninhabited windy sunny interior of the country plastered with
alternative energy sources? We drive through one town with the same
population as my hometown high school. Not bad, I think, two thousand
people is enough to seem crowded. Five minutes later I'm still driving
through the town and I realize it's so spread out they must never see each
other. I could never live like this (and I'm sure they wouldn't want me
anyway).

I'd resolved not to stop in Texas (can you guess why?) but the timing doesn't
work, we're low on gas. There are Subway restaurants all along the highways
out here and that's where we get lunch; everyone's getting tired of the
sandwiches we've been making every day. We're into Oklahoma shortly after
lunch; there is no paving going on here as it was in Texas and you can tell
because the road gets very bumpy. Otherwise the scenery is exactly the same
only with less trees, as if it's possible to make the driving more boring.
We pass a city with a sign that says "Home of Miss America 1981". That's
the best they can do? Miss America's hometown 25 years ago? Nothing since
then? We think about our wonderful friend who grew up on a farm in
Oklahoma; we don't know how she did it.

We arrive in Oklahoma City around 5:45pm and can't find a grocery store near
the RV park so we keep driving looking for a restaurant. We end up at an
Outback Steakhouse; America is indeed homogeneous. It's 103 in the shade
(get out of the shade!) and the RV is 95 by the time we get back into it.
It takes a few hours to cool down once we're at the campground but we sleep
comfortably. This is a one-night stop and we're driving another full day
tomorrow. We're trying to get to Santa Claus, IN by Sunday night where we're
staying at Lake Rudolph, the #1 National RV Park right next door to Splashin'
Safari, the #2 World Water Park. I've booked this place because it's in
Santa Claus, IN which had such a goofy name I had to check it out. Turns
out the kids are pretty psyched to get there and are very cooperative on
these long drives. We've been doing more driving than sight-seeing these
days and are looking forward to a fun stop. Tomorrow night St. Louis,
Sunday night #1.

# posted by LDW @ 11:24 PM