Tuesday, May 7th – Day 35 – Shamrock, TX to Elk City, OK

Best part of the day:   Goodbye Texas and Hello Oklahoma

Worst part of the day: Rushing to beat the storm

Distance: 58 miles        Riding Time: 5hrs 23min

Bed count: 19                Sleeping Bag count: 16

Slept well last night as it was nice to be indoors again. Breakfast was provided by the motel this morning. It was very nice with eggs, biscuits, gravy, waffles, coffee and juice. We wanted to get an earlier start knowing that we’d have crosswinds again plus there was a storm was coming.

We went back to our overcast and foggy morning. The temperature was just right for riding, so, we started off with just a windbreaker. The winds were down and we were able to ride quite a ways without a stop. At 14 miles from Shamrock, we crossed into Oklahoma. Hoped to see a “Welcome to Oklahoma” sign for a picture, but, none was to be had!! Made our first rest stop in northern part of Sayre, OK, after riding almost 39 miles, all on the Route 66 roadway. We stopped at a Hutch’s convenience store where Fay found a BBQ food truck tucked behind the store. We shared a brisket with sautéed onions sandwich and fries. That was so good, one of the best briskets we’ve had. They were constantly busy with people ordering and picking up.

Reaching Elk City, we stopped at a grocery store to pick up stuff for tonight’s dinner: a bag of Asian salad and frozen chicken fried rice and sweet sour chicken which can be heated up in our room’s microwave. With the storm approaching this late afternoon, we didn’t want to go back out.

Across the street from the grocery store was Elk City’s Route 66 museum. The Route 66 sign advertising its location was the largest “Route 66” sign we’ve seen so far on this trip!

Tonight, we’re at a Super 8 Motel with the TV on watching the local news’ weather for any updates on the storm. We’re safe inside!!

At a little after 6pm, we were hearing thunder!! The local weather channel was reporting that where we’re at is under a tornado warning!! At 7:30, it was raining buckets!! It didn’t last very long, but, water is very puddled outside of our hotel. Keeping an eye on the radar on our phone!

We’re also looking ahead at lodging options for the next few days to see if we’d be able to take two days instead of three to reach Rob’s brother’s place which would give us the opportunity to take two full rest days. Yes, it would mean at least one longer day’s ride, but, it’s a potential distance we’ve already done several times.

We’ve been very fortunate so far that any storms had been either ahead of or behind us. We’d been able to ride during the day, and of course, make it to our lodging before any storm comes in the afternoon. It’s been plenty of planning and weather watching to help make that happen.

Until our next post….