Day 2768

Half way there!

Today we will cross the halfway mark of this adventure at least distance wise, I’m going to take a different route around Oklahoma City witch will involve a little more toll road but hopefully will avoid a never ending construction zone in the city. The storm warning overnight was right on the money, and at 2 am it started and rumbled through till 3:30 with thunder, lighting and heavy rain, hell it rained so hard it washed most of the bugs off of the windshield.

It was 6:20 when I rolled out of bed this morning, maybe more of a nature call than anything else, dawn was breaking but some dark clouds to the east so no sunshine yet. I slept well until the storm hit and was able to fall back to sleep later, and the last time we were in Oklahoma waiting for our new windshields we had similar storms. As I’m typing this morning there seems to be a lot of train whistles this morning that I never noticed till now, the noise from the interstate is building as well, but it didn’t seem bad last night. Mister Sam greeted me this morning for his snacks but then headed for the big bed, he doesn’t like thunder so would have had a bad night along with not liking travel days he has been having a bad week period.

Well our route today will finally get us off of I-40 which we have been on since Tuesday morning, just a few miles of I-40 then the 344 Turnpike around Oklahoma City to I-44 which will take us right to the Mississippi River. Route 66 which ran from Chicago to Santa Monica and has been our route although most of the old highway was replaced by the interstate highway system but shows up along our route with roadside attractions right through to St. Louis.

Breakfast this morning was bacon on toasted sour dough bread along with a cup of fresh perked coffee that may have had a wee bit of Irish blessing. If all goes well this should be another four hour day, and should get us into Missouri. Our elevation at Oklahoma City is 1500 feet (457 meters) and today will be a series of rolling hills some only being 50 feet (15 meters) of roll and some having over 300 feet (91 meters) of roll, our elevation will descend as we get to Tulsa and the Arkansas River where the elevation will be 500 feet (152 meters) then climb back to 1000 feet (304 meters) at the Missouri State line.

So we managed to get on the road by 9:00 am and had good driving conditions pretty much all day, the new turnpike route reduced traffic and while a few mile longer was faster, and other than a couple of construction zones where the speed limit dropped below 55 mph (88 km/h) the cruise was set at 65 mph (104 km/h) and we made good time pulling into the Missouri Welcome Center by 12.45 pm

Today’s numbers from Thunder’s on board computer: running time 3:53, distance travelled 238.6 miles (383.9 kilometers), average speed 61 mph (98 km/h), consumed 28.5 gallons (107.8 liters) for a fuel mileage of 8.3 mpg (28.3 liters / 100 km). I have to admit I was very surprised by todays fuel mileage, I had set the cruise control at 65 instead of 64 and with the hills, it makes very little sense, but after eight years of travelling I just thought it was time to analyze the numbers a bit closer and if I can figure out how to improve the fuel mileage I will do it.