Darn, I got up too early this morning.  I meant to sleep in, but it just didn’t happen.  I got up about 7:00.  This was all without the benefit of a wet nose and a warm paw.  Where was Sascha?  Oh yeah, at home waking up Rick.

We got moving and loaded up the car.  Traffic through St Louis wasn’t too bad.  Unfortunately, I missed my turn and the GPS had figure out how to get back there.  Luckily, it wasn’t hard and we were on our way again.

Rich was almost true to his word.  He read his newspaper on his table most of the morning.  I drove at my usual speed and dodged all the big trucks.  There were some interesting ones.  You can tell the trucks that are hauling military family cars.  They are all mismatched and have plates for all over the country.  I only saw a couple of those. One carrier had old cars from the 40s, 50s, and 60s.  I assumed these were cars for an auction.

We came across a billboard that had us really laughing.  There is a town called Bourbon in Missouri.  We liked the name a lot.  It would be cool to say you lived in Bourbon.  However, I think some of their advertising could stand some editing.  Here’s the sign we saw:

Bourbon Family Center

Firearms and ammunitions  Beer-related beverages; Hand-dipped ice cream for the kids

Now what kind of family center is this that they have firearms!  Beer and ice cream go together?  We laughed and talked about all that meant.  Must be some kind of town.

We made it in Springfield, Missouri and saw signs for Lambert’s Restaurant.  If you watch shows on the Food Network, you would have seen Lambert’s being shown on a couple of them.  Their motto is: Home of the Thrown Roll.  They do actually throw rolls at you during dinner.  I’ll get that.

We pulled up to people waiting all over the place.  Because it was famous, we figured we would stay and eat her, just this once.  The wait was up to 50 minutes.  Wait the hey, we’ll only be here once.  I think we really waited for maybe 30 minutes or so.

They were called out tables for 5, 7, 12,and 20.  This is crazy.  Who can seat 20 people comfortably.  It also meant that the number of people outside would dwindle down.  But then new people would show up!  Pretty soon, our name was called.

We waded through the people when our name was called.  Our table was packed in tight, but we managed to squeeze into the booth.  The place was crazy.  Our server, Cassie, came by pretty quickly and took our drink order.  They came back in these huge mugs.  You know that really oversized coffee mugs that you can buy at some of the quickie marts?  Those mugs.  I guess they only wanted to make one trip for drinks.

We ordered up.  Now this is a chicken place, so I can the chicken livers.  Rich got the ham steak.  Our food came out and looked pretty good.  I mistakenly got brown gravy and not white gravy.  That didn’t hurt the taste much.  Rich’s meal came in a huge fry pan.  The ham steak filled the entire pan!  I’ve had better, but it was good for being so hungry.

While we were eating, servers walked around with side dishes that you could add to your meal for free.  There were fried potatoes, fried okra, and tomato and paste.  The guy finally made to our aisle with the rolls. You hold up your hand and he can pretty much hit you with a roll from almost the length of the aisle.  It was pretty cool.  The rolls are yeast and very solid.  They were warm and the butter melted right away.

Rich got a taste of the sorghum for his roll.  He didn’t know what to expect.  It’s made from a type of cane sugar and has a slightly burnt flavor to it.  I don’t think he liked the sticky mess that it makes as you are trying to eat it.  The kids all like it though.

After a 2 hour break, we finally got back on the road.  This was going to make us very late for arriving into our destination.  But we had to make it through all of the toll roads first.  44 is a mess with tolls.  We managed to pay the first one since it was manned.  The other tolls were trust and coins.  Turns out, we didn’t have enough change.  We did everything but one and ended up paying 65 cents out of 80 cents.  Guess we’ll have to send them the rest.

I have to say, it seemed like we were having trouble figuring out where we should be going.  The GPS was more confusing that helpful.  We missed a turn in Tulsa and ended up going down some road I wasn’t sure about.  It definitely wasn’t the way I had planned to go.  We managed to finally get to the original location after some trouble.

We needed to stop off at a Target or something to pick up a couple of items.  We managed to get off the tolls and take some surface roads to get to a store.  We thought the walk would do us some good.  We had been in the car for a couple of hours now.  We had some luck and got the things that we needed.  Now to get down to Mcalester to our next overnight stop.

Luckily, this toll road was manned (or womaned, I should say) and we could pay our fair share with dollar bills.  This took us into one of the Indian reservations.  It was a Choctaw reservation.  I didn’t see any trading posts though.  I doubt Rich would let me stop.

The speed limit was great.  I was flying along doing 80 in a 75.  I like speed.  I should have been the first Danica Patrick and not her.  Is it too late to get into Indy racing?  I’m not much for Nascar.

We got to Mcalester, where the speed limit when from 65 to 35 in the blink of an eye.  I think I saw speed trap written all over the back of that sign.  The town is really neat. Instead of a lot of buildings, you see a lot of open space and blue sky.  Every corner has a bison statue on it.  They all have slightly different poses.

We pulled up to the hotel and there were other cars waiting in the portico.  I went in to check in.  Turns out, the clerk didn’t have a reservation for tonight.  I had made reservations for our return trip going this way.  She had rooms and could sign us in.  Whew!  Had me worried for a bit.  I was not sleeping in the car.  No, Rose, I was not driving straight through either.

Rick called as we got to the hotel.  Sascha apparently was wanting a lot of attention.  I told him this was normal.  She didn’t have her people.  She was probably hearing a lot of fireworks too.  Sascha’s not very fond of that sound.  It’s probably way too much like thunder.  She would calm down eventually.

The room was nice and we got settled in.  We decided to go for a walk while it was daylight.  Across the parking lot, we saw a Chili’s.  Not our favorite place, but we knew we could get a drink.  I hadn’t brought my wallet, but Rich had.  I said I wasn’t sure I could get served without an ID.  Rich looks at me with a surprised smile and says, “I hate to tell you, but you won’t have any problems at all.”  I didn’t want to think it was that obvious.  Thanks, dear.

After a beer for him and a margarita for me, we wondered back to our room a little relaxed.  Then I sat down to write this blog.  Just wanted you to know that I took this seriously.  And no, I’m not drunk.

Pictures, you ask?  I didn’t take a bunch today.  But I can share with you what I have.

Good night, all.