From dark to light, from sleep to awake. This is the only change so far. Still hot, still windy; this has not changed in over a week. Back in April when I thought I would be riding through Oklahoma, Nancy booked campgrounds where it would be convenient for both my riding miles and rest days. So we are here for four nights.
Oklahoma has interstate highways or busy paved back roads with no shoulder. I’ll rephrase, on the few paved roads that have a shoulder, the state decided that filling up to two-foot shoulders with rumble strips is a great idea. On the roads that have no rumble strips, the fog line is right on the edge of the roads, and in some places, the white line is half on the pavement with the other half painted on the dirt.
The Golden Gravel Trail is on gravel roads that parallel the Interstates or paved back roads somewhere off in the distance. East or West, North to South, the grid is the same. I call them gravel roads loosely; in Oklahoma, soil is red clay. So any rain, even a fraction of an inch, the water sits on the clay in the form of pottery clay. The bike tires sink in, the clay sticks to the tires and everything it comes in contact with. And in the spots where you don’t sink in, the surface is greasy. So, since the incident with my bike getting to Copan, OK., I have been avoiding the red clay roads.
A long story short, this is why I am camping in places for multiple days. Nancy booked sites that would be in sync with my schedule. This campground is where I get shuttled to John Martin Reservoir State Park in Colorado. This is the first campground on the route where she could camp with services. And, for me, there is a stretch of one hundred sixty miles with no place to resupply, and the two BLM campsites have no water. My route maps show only three stops to get water, and they are from various water troughs for cattle.
I am at an age and place in life where I do not want this kind of suffering. During our time in Oklahoma, we decided to alter portions of the route to include visiting more places in Utah.
This morning, Nancy booked a campground across the border in Kansas for tomorrow and the next day. It will shorten the drive to Colorado and allow seeing new sights along the way.
We will go into Beaver tonight for dinner at the BS Bar and Grill, which is located right across the street from Beaver Liquor. Yes, you read this correctly. The Bar and Grill comes highly recommended by the locals.
Beaver Liquor is uncertain.
The BS Bar and Grill, we get there around 4 p.m. The only other people there are one family. We sit down and the waitress takes our order, fairly simple: one burger, one Goucho (which is basically a steak sandwich), and two margaritas. The drinks come and we are told our dinners will be ready in a few minutes. The waitress comes back thirty minutes later and tells us it will be a minute before the meal comes. I order another drink. We’ve been sitting here over an hour now and the waitress comes over and asks if we’ve ordered yet.
Without all the details, we are pissed when she tells us our order must have been given to a takeout order. Words are exchanged. The owner comes to our table and offers to let us take our meal back to the campsite; poor Moe is waiting for us to come back. The owner apologizes and tells us the meal and drinks are on the house. I pointed to my margarita and said this is coming with me. She put it into a plastic glass and handed it to me at the back of the building. All of this for a so-so meal.
