We left Van Buren Arkansas bright and early and were immediately in Oklahoma. The speed limit dipped momentarily down to 70, then was posted back up to 75 mph with a prominent notation: “NO TOLERANCE”. We suspect this means to watch your speed. It is easy to go fast on the flat, empty highway in the flat empty expanse of land.
When I was plotting our trip on the big map of America, I noticed a place on Interstate 40 where it crossed rural highway 69 in Oklahoma. I remembered a line from a Carrie Underwood song that I heard her perform live in Huntsville Alabama what seems like a life time ago, when she was a newly discovered country singer: “Where sixty-nine meets forty, there’s a single-stoplight town”.
It is a sweet song about her hometown, Checotah (pronounced “chick-coat-tah”) and I immediately fell in love with the idea of this town and put it on my bucket list. Ron and I listened to the song again in the hotel last night, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCHP99ESapc. This morning, exactly 1001 miles into our trip, we stopped in Checotah.
There wasn’t much to see, but the feel was pure small-town America. A few coffee shops, a diner, a secondhand clothing store, a fire station, several churches.
There are two stoplights today, and a handful of marijuana dispensaries, but other than that the town looks just as she remembers it. We stayed on highway 69 and headed south a few miles to Lake Eufaula, where according to Ms. Underwood there is excellent crappie fishing.
Back on I-40 West, our adventure continued. Billboards were scarce, but interesting. Fried Pies. Catfish. Oil wells gave way to wind turbines. Sections of old Route 66 ran parallel to the interstate, and we pulled over onto a bit of it for a cold and windy picnic lunch.
By mid afternoon we were in Texas, the square piece at the top of the state that juts up into Kansas between Missouri and Colorado. Texas is only 178 miles wide here. A sign at the border invited us to the Welcome Center 100 miles away. Ron mused this was for efficiency, a single center to welcome traffic from both directions.
The landscape stayed flat and dry, and the trees continued to get shorter and squatter. The campers and RVs that were so plentiful in North Carolina and Tennessee have been getting fewer and fewer as we head west. Now in Texas, we have only seen a handful on the road, but have passed several RV graveyards in the desert. There is much to learn about a civilization by how they treat their dead. I am not quite sure what the RV and train graveyards say about Texans.
Car Talk
Distance: 454 miles
Average mileage 29 mpg
Average speed 65 mph
Driving Time 6 hours, 55 minutes
Note on mileage: speeds of 85-90 mph greatly increase fuel consumption. It is a good trade!
“The thing I noticed about Oklahoma is its damn nice roads.”
Question: Does octane matter? In North Carolina, premium gasoline is 93 octane. In western Tennessee and Arkansas, premium gasoline is 91 octane. In Texas, premium gasoline is 90 octane. Is this why my mileage is going down?! In New Mexico, premium gasoline is 91 octane. Will my mileage go back up?
Comments