The Long Way Home: 07/15/15

The Long Way Home - Day 22 - Oklahoma to the left, Kansas to the right

Wednesday, July 15th

Our route today took us directly west from Newkirk to Buffalo, Oklahoma

We started the day by getting out of the hotel late and then immediately stopping for breakfast! We're glad we did because the Bakery in Newkirk was a really fun place to have breakfast. This is one of those places that is the hub of the town.

This town has their routines. We learned that there is a 6am, 9am, and 10am coffee. We arrived between the 9 and 10 am coffee. When the 10am coffee people started coming in, everyone of them came by and asked who we were. Here's a photo of that group. Luckily, we hadn't chosen to sit at one of those table or according to the waitress, there could have been trouble :)

After hitting the road at 10:15, we were able to make up some time. I'm not joking when I say that I could have ridden the first 30 miles with my handlebars welded straight ahead.

We livened it up a bit by a right, two lefts, and a right, around the fields. This led us up to the Kansas-Oklahoma boarder.

Kansas is on the right.

We were riding in crazy hot weather. It started out hot, then got unbearably hot, then it moved up a notch. There was a strong cross wind on top of it and riding by empty fields would super heat the wind and make it difficult to breath! This burned field must have increased the already hot temps by 10 degrees.

This house looked like we felt: baked and wind blown.

Lunch was in Alva which is a typical Oklahoma town. Older buildings but well maintained.

We had another turtle rescue today. The dirt roads around here are pretty well travelled by semi-trucks. It's very Mad-Max looking to see a semi-truck driving fast down a dirt road. We had to hurry to get our bikes to the side and snap this picture before picking him up and moving him to the side.

Also found this toad at another stop.

OK, can you tell this was a light news day?

The day ended well when we arrived at our super comfortable and affordable little house/hotel in Buffalo. The Wheatland Inn consists of two little houses in town. This entire building is our place - Nice!

Tomorrow looks to be similar. We will continue our westward travel along the Kansas/Oklahoma border to arrive in Boise City, Oklahoma.

Thank you for following us.

Where are they now?

The Long Way Home - Day 21 - High Water Mark

Tuesday, July 14th

The day started out in Locust Grove, Oklahoma. The plan takes us up to the Kansas-Oklahoma border and then west to Newkirk, Oklahoma.

Oklahoma has open space on a different scale than anything we have ever seen before. I'm sure these photos will not capture it but with the recent rains, the landsape was very green and it seemed to go on forever.

Today we met another father-son team on the TAT. They started from the North Carolina coast and they are headed to Oregon. They were trying to cover a lot of ground today because they have a wedding to be at on Saturday in Denver! Their goal for the day was close to 300 miles. The riding in Oklahoma is faster than other states but we ran into some setbacks today. They are both excellent riders so I'm sure that helped them make up lost time. I hope they were able to meet their goal.

We had the opportunity to ride with them on and off during the day. We eventually lost track of them in the late afternoon. Good luck Steve and Dusty!

We reached an area that has seen an unusually high amount of rain. There were signs warning about the flooding but we had to see for ourselves. Sure enough, the signs were correct! This is the deepest crossing we have ever attempted:

After getting both bikes through that crossing, we ran into this:

The road looked more like a boat ramp and we couldn't even see where it came back out of this lake. This was a good point to trun around. We routed around to the far side and eventually came upon another area of flooding. This bridge looked like a barge parked in the middle of a lake. We decided to try to make the bridge. As Hank pointed out, this is the stuff adventures are made of! (I didn't mention that this is also the stuff disasters are made out of)

Take a look at this tree caught in the bridge. The water was a lot higher. This bridge had to be spanning some sort of river below. The total flood height was significant!

After the bridge, we could see where the flooded road curved through the grass. We didn't see anything too dangerious so we decided to go for it. It all turned out to be a lot of fun.

It was clear we were the first vehicles through here since the flooding. We declared the road officially reopened!

During the day we had stopped on the road for a break and a truck stopped. Matt introduced himself and asked where we were headed. He was very interested in our story and it turns out he has a place in Ridgecrest, California. We do a lot of riding out there and we knew a lot of the places he liked to ride. He told us about this neat trail down to an abandoned bridge. We had to check it out.

A while later, another truck stopped and asked if we were OK. That man turned out to be Matt's father. He didn't know that Matt had also stopped. It's a small world, and the people around here are consistently very friendly.

After al these trun-a-rounds and extra adventures, we were running low on fuel, The closest gas station was a few miles into Kansas so we got to ride through Kansas on the way to our hotel.

The cool car of the day:

John Deere. 'nuff said.

Tommorow we 're continuing our westward trek through Oklahoma. Buffalo is just at the beginning of the Oklahoma pan handle.

Thank you for following us.

Where are they now?

Wednesday, July 15, 2015