Today was expected to be just as boring as yesterday and it certainly lived up to expectations. One thing I didn't mention yesterday was that Dodge City seems to be the Cattle Death Camp Capital of the West. As we rode out this morning there were even more stockyards located on all the roads coming into and going out of Dodge City. As we headed out on US-400E, there were cattle trucks, one after another like a parade of Death Wagons heading for the stockades. It turns out the number one industry in Dodge City is actually meat packing, with 2 major meat packers having large facilities there.
      So it was another day of cruise control at 70 and crank up the tunes as the scenery wasn't any better than yesterday . Jody amused herself by counting Death Wagons as they went by, but soon lost count after 50. Once we were sufficiently out of the city limits, the stench of the stockyards subsided, replaced with the chemical smell of farming. The first hundred miles or so until we reached Woodward were really just a repeat of yesterday - straight, flat, and you could see for miles in any direction. One difference though, as soon as we crossed the border into Oklahoma, we started seeing an abundance of wind farms among the fields. There seems to be a lot more wind energy being generated than we hear about on the news. Lucky for us, the wind was low today, though all the wind turbines were still spinning slowly.
     It was 81 degrees in the morning, 88 degrees by late afternoon with little wind. It certainly made for an easy if not memorable ride. The other thing we noticed is that once we got past Woodward, the wind farms went away and the oil pumps began appearing. There was almost always at least one pump in view at all times as we continued down on OK-33/OK-3 . Then when we were about an hour away from the hotel, all of a sudden was a big sign saying that the road was closed and the bridge ahead was out. There was a detour to OK-81N. Great, the Garmin wasn't sure what to do with all this, so we followed the detour signs to see where they would take us. Finally they turned onto OK-51, and the Garmin seemed to know what to do from there. We lost about an hour travel time, but we were early for the hotel anyway.
     As we approached Oklahoma City, the landscape changed. Now everything was beginning to look like the typical suburb. Edmond is just a suburb of Oklahoma City, and looks the same as any other suburb, strip mall after strip mall. When we finally reached the hotel, it was about 3:30, and when we went to check in, we found out that I had inadvertently booked a smoking room instead of a non-smoking room, and there were no other rooms available. I checked the local area on hotels.com and everything was pretty well booked up. So they let us go upstairs and check out the room to see how bad it would be and at first it didn't seem too bad. Everything was clean enough, just that lingering smell of tobacco. It was only for one night, so we decided to stay.
      There wasn't anywhere good to eat nearby, so we ended up at the local Panera Bread which was fine. There was a CVS next door, so while we were inside getting some supplies, I also picked up an air freshener to make things a little more tolerable in the room. I checked my remaining reservations for next week to make sure all the rooms were non-smoking. I used to be a heavy smoker, but that was over 20 years ago, and I think the older I get, the more sensitive I get to the smell. There are very few states left that allow smoking rooms in hotels, but evidently Oklahoma is one of them.
     Tomorrow we are off to Texas. When we planned this trip, we were looking to do some sightseeing in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, but the trip was getting too long, so we settled for a scenic ride through East Texas, so we'll only be in Texas for a couple of nights as we make our way south and east to New Orleans. Hopefully there will be some picture worthy sights tomorrow!

310.3 miles today
18,307.0 miles total

4.137 gallons today
431.886 gallons total