We'd originally planned to stop in Oklahoma City, but found a cute airbnb in Bristow which is about an hour or so closer. Somehow an eleven hour drive really is much nicer than a twelve hour drive. We set out at eight from a sunny Chicago.
We took a fair number of car trips when we were young and for a while we really only listened to two things over and over -- "500 Miles" by the Proclaimers, and story tapes by Jay O'Callahan. I'm not sure which of those my mom or dad preferred less, but my brother and I are still alive today -- so repeated high-pitched calls of "Again! Again!" each time "500 Miles" ended were not enough to cause them to take the car violently off of the road and into whatever field of cows or crops was nearby.
My mom, Elisa, gave us two beautiful gifts: a couple of Jay O'Callahan CDs, and the perfect mixtape. We listened to the mixtape first. It contains fifteen tracks, and all of them are "500 Miles" by the Proclaimers.
500 Miles Listen Count: 2
We also listened to one of the Jay O'Callahan stories -- a two-disk piece called "Gouda." It was great, but I'm really excited for another, "Woe is me Bones." I can't find a preview, but it's something like these.
Our Tour of St. Louis
Chicago to St. Louis is not an exciting drive, but we were rewarded with a whirlwind tour of the famous Arch. Witness, in all its glory:
So Grand!
We did actually get a bit closer. I went up in the arch once as a kid. It's a terrifying process as the ancient elevator grinds upward, periodically clunking, clanging, adjusting side-to-side to deal with the Arch's angle.
Carrie took a bunch of shots looking for the perfect one. This is it.
Getting Outside
We decided to stretch our legs for a couple of hours at Castlewood State Park. We were originally also going to visit Lone Elk Park -- where you can see at least one Elk -- but the hike was a bit longer than we anticipated. At Castlewood, anyway, we did get to see a number of squirrels, perhaps a thousand stink bugs, and one small snake!
We also saw this river
And a ton of trees
And here's proof that we are really there and not just looking up pictures on the internet
Getting to Bristow, Oklahoma
Our remaining time on Thursday was fairly uneventful, although we did visit Redmond's Candy Factory in order to replace some chocolate pretzels that mysteriously disappeared from our home coincident with Carrie's mom leaving our place last weekend. We also found out that Oklahoma has toll roads, and Carrie experienced Hardee's curly fries for the first time.
We're now going to make some coffee, eat a small breakfast that our kind airbnb hosts left, and get back on the road bound for Albuquerque -- whose spelling I have to look up every single time.
