June 14 Day 18

Where are Tom and Lennie Now? -Click Here For Our Current Location

Today we left Santa Rosa, New Mexico, and headed out for Tulsa, Oklahoma.

On our route, we passed through Amarillo, Texas.  We stopped for gas on the famous old Route 66.  Just down the road from the gas station, was the strange, yet famous Cadillac Ranch.  The Cadillacs here are just sitting out in a corn field Partially buried???

While in Amarillo, we also stopped at the Big Texan Steak Ranch.  Kind of a tourist trap, but the food was pretty good.

Lots of animals hanging on the walls inside.

They even had their own strollin', strummin', and singin' cowboy to entertain you while you eat.

This place is famous for their FREE steak dinner.  That's right, FREE.  I know, you're thinking that there must be some catch....  well, you are right.  The catch is that the steak is 72 ounces, and includes the following, one shrimp cocktail, one salad, one baked potato, one dinner roll, and of course one 72 ounce steak.  You must eat the entire meal within one hour, and it's free.  If you fail, the meal costs you $72.00  There are actually quite a few people who have finished the meal, and a few who finished it in under 10 minutes !!  You can look at their website for more info (www.bigtexan.com).  They have special seats for those eating the big meal, and they have a live webcam on their website so you can watch, although I am unsure why you would want to?

Outside, they have the giant cow?

And of course, the giant boot?

After we ate, we took another look at the weather, and decided to change our plans.  We had originally planned to travel through Oklahoma City and on to Tulsa.  However, there was a huge line of thunderstorms that hovered over Oklahoma City and Tulsa for pretty much the entire day.  Matter of fact, at 11:oo PM, the radar still looked like this...  I guess Oklahoma City has had some terrible flooding from these storms hanging out the entire day.

So, we cancelled our room in Tulsa, and decided to head toward Wichita, Kansas instead.  This means that we will add Kansas to our states covered in this trip, and we will not travel through Arkansas as previously planned.

The route from Amarillo to Wichita was all back roads.  The interesting thing, is that the back roads around here are 65-70 mph roads, so travel is just about as fast as on the highways, except for the small towns you pass through every 30-40 miles.

Changing our route allowed us to cover 545 miles today, and not encounter a single drop of rain.

We did have one interesting thing happen...  Most of the roads we used were through cattle and corn farms.  At one point I heard this really loud rumbling noise, and my first thought was that the semi truck in front of us crept over the white line and was running his tires on the rumble strips.  A quick glance, confirmed that was not the case.  I then assumed someone with a loud vehicle was coming up on my left to pass me, a quick glance to the left, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a VERY low flying plane just to my left.  He was flying so low, and right next to the road, that my first thought was he was going to try to land on the road.  He passed us and dipped even lower, then a huge mist was released from the plane.  That's right, this clown was crop dusting the corn fields right next to the road!!  The issue was, that his chemical mist ended up on his corn, and all over my bike.  It coated the windshield with a thick oily film.  Lennie and I ended up having to stop a few miles up the road in the next small town to clean the windshield (so we could see) and front of the bike.  I bet not many of you can say that you have been crop dusted!!

I hope the ride tomorrow brings fewer surprises.

Below is our route from today, we covered 545 miles, bringing our current trip total to 5354 miles.

Tomorrow we will make our way to Effingham, Illinois for the night.  Then Wednesday, we will make it home.