Missouri to Oklahoma as the Storm Trackers

8/30/10 Branson, MO. This is the "Landing" in old historic Branson. We stayed up the street and spent 2 nights to enjoy the "country Las Vegas". They had water and light shows with music here every hour. Great shopping if you had the space to take things home! The main "strip" was filled with theatres, restaurants and hotels. Lots of shows to pick from so we chose an afternoon show called the Legends and an evening show of the Dutton Family. Great entertainment and nice break with the air conditioning! It was up to 95 degrees during the day- "a break from the 102 they had last week" according to a guy a Starbucks! Yes, the first Starbucks we've been in since we left Washington. Camping coffee and hotel room coffee has been the mainstay!

8/31/10 Great food at Joe's Crab Shack after the first show. One of the places we got good tips on what roads to take, where to visit, etc. We have met some really nice people on this USA tour!

9/1/10 Ready to travel onward towards Oklahoma. We ended up pulling over after 2 miles to put on rain gear for the second time. You can see the storm brewing in the background. Boy did we see some HEAVY rain and thunderstorms. We opted for going back up to Springfield, MO to hit the interstate to stay off the lowlands. We had 1-2 inches per hour for 4 hours. When semi's were pulling off the road and other motorcyclists were under overpasses we opted to find the nearest truck stop. We holed up there for 2 hours just waiting for some visibility and to try and dry off! I was thinking about calling Uncle Scotty for his scuba gear. We had water dripping down our necks, off our noses and down the closed vents on the helmet besides through our boot seams. That was with 3 layers of gear on! About 4:00 Mark said "His fun meter had run out and it was time to stop"! We stayed in Joplin, MO. right on the 4 corners of Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas. They had laundry there so I was drying the clothes and Mark was in the room with the hairdryer working on our gloves and boots! :) Time to recharge the fun meter!

And a few hours later here is the beautiful sunset that appeared after the storm out of our Best Western window! This was a taste of what was to come with weather changes....

9/2/10 Woke up to sunshine and it was 85 degrees and 100% humidity by 10 am. We opted for Route 66 to do 3 of the four corners in the morning. This little building, in Kansas, had the hand painted mural. We were in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma within one hour! And it took us 8 days to get through South Dakota! We stayed on lots of back country roads and chose to go across Oklahoma from Vinita on the northern state highway 64 and skip the interstates. The temperature continued to rise but we rode all day. Such a contrast this morning compared to yesterday! Who would have guessed we would have stayed 4 nights in Missouri when we weren't even planning on going there. That's how the trip has been- one day or one hour at at a time!

9/2/10 We went through the Osage Indian Reservation. Lots of tiny little communities with a great Mexican chicken lunch in Pawhuska and ice cream in Ponca City. No dieting on this trip! Cornfields were replaced with hay fields, oil pumps, cows, horses and dead armadillos on the side of the road. Thousands of acres of ranch land with grocery stores over 70 miles apart. They must keep big cellars and extra freezers! Did I tell you how hot it was so far today? The bike thermometer said 100 degrees for ambient air.

Reminded me of Beverly Hillbillies! These oil pumps would be all over with small tanks close by and sometimes a gas line. The roads were in good shape for being off the main interstate.

Just so the refinery workers don't feel left out we passed by the Conoco Phillips Refinery. Mark piped up that if he was ever asked to do a shutdown in Oklahoma to remind him of the heat index! We ran into some of the contractors at our next hotel stop...

I'm listening to the weather alert channel and they were predicting this huge thunderstorm and high winds to hit the area by 5:00. Well, it was 4:00 and you can see that we are heading right into it. We knew that Enid, OK was 15 miles from there so we booked it into the town. The temperature dropped almost 20 degrees and the sky changed weird colors and as we approached the city there was debris flying all over the place! We were glad to get a room and decided that camping was not an option... When the manager gives you the directions on what do to if the sirens sound for tornadoes you know you are close to Kansas! We were over a day's drive away from where our niece Sarah is at horseshoeing school and the storm actually bulls eyed that area so we chose to talk to her on the phone instead of going down there. The storm subsided quickly in Enid but did a lot of damage in Oklahoma City this night.

And again, here is the clearing, beautiful sky at dusk. Whew, time to find New Mexico!

We are actually having a great time and Mark was sorry he didn't get to see the storm in "full force". I have named him the "storm tracker" this week.

We are debating whether we should stay in Oklahoma to watch the Cougars play OSU tomorrow!