4/10/15 – Bartlesville OK to Poplar Bluff MO

Leaving Bartlesville at daylight, we continued east on Rt. 60 into a rapidly changing landscape.  Eastern Oklahoma gets less windy, the redbud trees start showing up in their pink blossoms and the roadside trees change to tall deciduous.  The road begins to wind a bit more, going through hills and around curves that hide the horizon we’d been seeing ahead of us for days.  We crossed Kentucky Creek, which caused me to think of how that name might have migrated out here, perhaps with a homesick traveler back in the pioneer days.

The constant wind has faded now, with the coming of the hills and trees, allowing me to easily hold a straight line again without effort.  I’m back to leaning over the “tipover lines” in the curves, sometimes hanging off the side of the bike, over the sidecar, on the right handers, probably amusing Jay behind me, to see such exaggerated gyrations producing slow progress.
We cross into Missouri and suddenly the trip feels less remote, more like we’re back in home country again. Rt. 60 loses some of its charm when it takes on four-lane pretensions for long stretches, but time is growing short so we endure these drones.

At Seymour MO, we find lunch at Uncle Rooster’s cafe where the waitress, who appears to be in her early 40’s, tells us that she has several grandchildren and another on the way.  I order a virtuous salad, but then am swayed by the coconut cream pie that Jay gets, such that I end up leaving most of the salad untouched to concentrate on the pie. One must have priorities.

We are, as Randy Scott used to say, “burning daylight, so the rest of the day recedes in the rear view mirror in a blur as we make our way into Poplar Bluff to call a halt.  There the only motels available are of the “modern” variety, without outside entrances to the rooms, requiring us to unload the bikes onto a cart and proceed up an elevator to our accommodations.  There is a fine Mexican restaurant nearby however, so we are satisfied.