After a week of touring the Oklahoma City area on the AACA Glidden Tour, we are on our way home to PA.  We are still in Oklahoma, having driven through open grasslands and cattle country.  As we have traveled east, the landscape is beginning to look more like East Texas and North Louisiana - hardwood forest with mostly oaks and cedar and pines interspersed among rolling hills and pasture land.

People have asked us countless times about driving through the deserts and how hot it must be.  I always have said it is no problem because we sit up high in an open car and catch the breeze as we drive along.  It is very comfortable.  It does get hot when we stop just as it does for someone driving a modern air-conditioned car when they stop.  Driving in the South in summer and early fall is another matter entirely.  I noticed a thermometer on a bank sign in a small town in southern Oklahoma yesterday that said 104 degrees.  I can't say with certainty that the sign was correct, but I did see several others throughout the day with temperatures in the 98 degree range.  Either way, hot in the south is hot and humid and not much fun.  What breeze you do get coming through the car is muggy.  We are drinking water constantly and I generally fill up a large cup at the service station with ice and just suck on chips of ice throughout the drive.  Joe's preferred method is sipping iced tea.

We are in the town of Idabel, OK this evening and will head to Texarkana, TX tomorrow night.  Joe plans to stay in Texarkana for a couple of days and work on the car, still investigating an oil leak.  I'll rent a car and head down to Shreveport and Ruston, Louisiana to visit relatives.  I can't wait to see them!  Joe just needs some down time with the car to see if he can figure out it's problem and fix it.  That's hard to do when you drive 100 miles a day or more.  I wish I could spend more time in LA visiting, but I can't this trip.  We still have a long way to go to get home by October 1.