Road Trip Out West; Exploring, Wandering and Photography; Part XVIII; Oklahoma And Home

Yikes!  We needed to drive from "A" to "B" in the morning.  The storms were moving east
so I thought a detour to the northeast was the more prudent route.  There was a chance we could
drive out of the bad weather and have a clear drive home on the last day.  But that wasn't to be.

As much as I love road trips, traveling, exploring new places and meeting really nice people, it always feels so good to be back home.  Safe and sound.  Familiar routines.  Family.  Friends.  Comforting.  Funny thing, though.  About three days after I'm back home, I'm ready to hit the road again!

This is the last post of our actual road trip and it was a great one.  I'll have a wrap-up post in the next few days with my random thoughts and recommendations about the trip.  You will find it interesting.  But now...back to the last couple days of our road trip.

Stress.  Threatening weather.  We spent the night in an eastern suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma.  I think I may have mentioned early on that I like to drive through large cities and spend the night on the other side so as to not have to fight rush hour traffic in the morning. 

The view from our hotel room the night before we were to drive to St. Louis.  The foreboding
clouds only strengthened and several large thunderstorms passed through overnight.  Timing became
the critical factor for us leaving the next morning. (Fujifilm X100VI from a JPEG file.)
(click to enlarge)

The drive across Oklahoma was uneventful.  The farther east we traveled, the less perfect the weather became.  More clouds, more wind and the weather predictions weren’t looking good for the next few days.  In other words, typical late spring and early summer weather in the American Midwest.

As I frequently monitored the weather forecasts over the past few days, I saw that torrential thunderstorms had been raging with numerous tornados, large hail and high winds throughout the Midwest.  Right where we needed to go.  Yikes!  Earlier in the day, I had the choice of continuing on I-40 east through Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee or veering northeast to Tulsa then St. Louis and picking up I-64.  Interstate 40 had two things working against it, in my opinion.  First, the nasty weather was generally heading along its route.  No escape.  Second, I-40 has a lot of trucks.  Lots of them compared to other highways.  Trucks and heavy rain don't go well together when traveling at high speeds.  I decided to go northeast.  So at Oklahoma City, I diverted to the Oklahoma Turnpike and headed toward Tulsa.

That night, east of Tulsa, I kept a keen eye on the weather.  The Weather Channel gurus spoke about potential 70mph (113kph) winds, golf ball sized hail, a chance for tornados, 5"-8" (13-20cm) of rain and boreal flooding everywhere—right where I needed to drive the next day.  I told my wife that I thought it might be best to leave very, very early in the morning to miss as much 'heating of the day' and avoid as much of the bad weather as possible.  Well, that didn't work as there were booming thunderstorms all night long.  Evidently, there would be no escaping the bad weather.

Not getting a good night’s sleep due to the overnight storms and worrying about our drive the next morning just increased my stress level.  After checking the radar early in the morning and seeing rain everywhere, Plan A was out.  Plan B was to wait until the worst part of the storms passed.  I thought leaving the hotel about 10:30 a.m. or so would give us a buffer from the ongoing storms as they moved east.  About 7:30 a.m., I noticed that a wedge-shaped area opened up between Tulsa and Springfield, Missouri with no rain.  Split second decision time.  I then told my wife we were leaving "right now."  She said she wasn't ready and I repeated, "We're leaving right now while we can avoid the worst of the weather!"  We left.

We did avoid the rain until we were north of Springfield, Missouri, about 175 miles (281km).  It did start to rain northeast of Springfield but only lightly, all the way to St. Louis.  But traffic was very, very heavy.  I was surprised.  

Along our way, somewhere in central Missouri, a motorcyclist went off the road at 70mph, into the median and took out two or three of the vertical steel 3 ft. high I-beams and thick steel cable strung between them.  The department of transportation puts those up to keep vehicles from crossing the median and going into oncoming traffic.  The poor fellow was lying on the grass critically injured.  There were people there helping him.  (I truly felt there was no way to survive that crash but later I found an article that said he was taken to a hospital in critical condition.  I found nothing further so I don't know if he survived.)  Three motorcyclists, all looking in their 50s or older, had just passed us less than 5 minutes before.  It was one of them who crashed.  I hope he survived and is successfully recuperating.  Not being able to provide any time of assistance, we drove on and, again, we stayed just east of a major city.  In this case, St. Louis.  Overall, not too bad a day for driving.  At the end of the day, it was the extremely heavy traffic more than the weather that was bothersome.

The next day, the plan was to drive from St. Louis to Lexington, KY, which we did.  It was an easy drive.  I-64 never seems crowded and never has a lot of trucks.  We spent the night in an all suites hotel, a treat for us given we had been on the road for almost three weeks.  The extra room and having a sofa to stretch out in the evening on was a nice change.

On the last day of our trip, from Lexington, we planned to drive all the way home.  It was a longer drive than I like to make but it would be our last day on the road—and it turned our, the worst, weather-wise.  We got up early and started our drive.  It was lightly raining, a sign of what the day would bring.  

The drive home was anything but pleasant.  It rained every mile of the 561 miles (903km) of our journey home.  Every mile.  The worst part was driving the West Virginia Turnpike, up and down and around and through the mountains with all of those large tractor trailer trucks spewing spray from their wheels.  Visibility was marginal at best.  I'm sure all of you know exactly what I'm talking about.  But, I just took my time, drove reasonably and safely.  When we got into Virginia, I decided to get off of the interstate highway, detour south toward Roanoke, Virginia and take Route 460 east.  Even though the moderate to heavy rain continued, the speed limit was lower and there are never many trucks on that divided road that travels through the beautiful rolling hills of Virginia.  Immediately, my stress level went down.

 We finally made it home from one of our best road trips that we've ever had.  We both are grateful and thankful as we drove over 5570 miles and made it home safely.

As I mentioned, I’ll have a wrap up post in a few days with a trip summary, my thoughts about my camera gear, the places we visited and recommendations and advice for those who may want to travel the the places we did and recommendations for others.

I appreciate each of you making this trip with us.  I love being able to share and to be helpful if others want to visit the places we visited.  If you have any questions about the trip planning, photo gear, places we visited or anything else about our journey, you can either leave a comment or email me.  My email can be found on my website.

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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