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Get your kicks on Route 66
By Hilary ScottJanuary 20, 2009
They walk slow in the Mid West. There are two speeds, said ranchman Jim, “mosey and plum still”.
Jim was chatting to us as he took us for a mosey round his dude ranch, Meadowlake – a place I could happily have spent the rest of the trip.
Log cabins by a lake, a shooting range, riding, tomahawk throwing lessons and more, it’s a 350-acre spread in Indian territory where you “come as a stranger, leave as a friend.”
It would make sense to be pals with Jim. As we petted some of his horses I spotted a turtle lurking nearby. “Aah, a cute little turtle,” I remarked. Bang!
As quick as you like, Jim had whipped out his pistol and shot it. “It’s a snapping turtle,” he harrumphed. “They ain’t that cute when they’ve bitten one of your toes off.” Well I ain’t doing speed number two, plum still, round here I thought.
But you needn’t ever be plum still at Meadowlake. We sharpened our shooting, tossed our tomahawks, threw a few knives, learnt to lasso a cow and ate steak and burgers.
A few beers on our lakeside patio at dusk rounded off a fantastic day and we shared grits and eggs for breakfast with our new best pal Jim before setting off for Tulsa, only a 15-minute drive away.
We were staying at the Cherokee Casino Hotel, a hotel owned by the Cherokee nation and which funds programmes to help the tribe into employment. It’s big, bright and garish but comfy. And busy, like a mini Las Vegas.
The White River Fish Market was built in 1932 and has been selling and serving seafood since then. We dined on a huge bowl of crayfish, catfish and trout served up with a bowl of gumbo and red beans and rice.
Tulsa’s also known for the Philbrook (art) and Gilcrease museums which are well worth a visit but did you know the father of Route 66 (the biggest part of which is here in Oklahoma) Cyrus Avery was born in Tulsa?
Route 66 is a classic piece of American history and there’s a whole association dedicated to the upkeep of the road which took the Okies and the Arkies (folks from Arkansas) west during the Great Depression and Dustbowl years.
Take your time to get your kicks on Route 66 – there’s plenty to see.
We stopped at the Red Barn, a 45-foot high round red barn built in 1898 to withstand tornadoes, and several of the small towns like Catoosa and Sapulpa.
It’s not hard to get lost on such a historic road but we did. Heavy rain disorientated us in Osage county but we still made our dinner date (and a buffalo steak) at an old speakeasy joint, the Rusty Barrell in Ponca City. Next day, next stop Bartlesville, notable as the longtime home of Phillips Petroleum Company, now merged with Conoco as ConocoPhillips and, dominating the skyline, the gorgeous cantilevered Price Tower designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
It’s stunning outside and in with a café and a hotel – but we couldn’t rest our weary heads much as we would have loved to. We had another date this time over the border in Kansas at Hutchison.
(And here’s an interesting fact – we all know Arkansas is pronounced Ark-can-saw but the Arkansas river cuts through Oklamhoma and Kansas and locals call it the Ar-kansas river).
Hutchison is pretty sleepy but if you’re with kids or a cinema fan it’s a must. The Kansas Cosmosphere is an out-of-this-world space museum with a bigger collection of US and Russian space artefacts than NASA including the Apollo 13 command module, a planetarium for kids, a lab where you can “play” with rockets, an IMAX theatre and, to me the best of all, The Astronaut Experience where you can try out being weightless or guide the Space Shuttle down in a perfect-scale simulator.
There’s also a perfectly preserved art deco cinema – The Fox – which is still showing movies and has a charming lady caretaker from Texas.
A big date in our diary was to see the Symphony in the Flint Hills, an annual gathering to celebrate the prairie with the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra. But it’s also about celebrating the prairie way of life with food, poetry, wagon trails and more. Listening to the orchestra as the sun goes down on the Flint Hills is simply unfoggettable.
Next was Wichita, a delightful city which was the least ‘Mid-West’ of all the towns we visited.
Wichita has a European feel – pavement cafes, narrower streets and a riverside culture. Base yourself at the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel in the Old Town, visit the Cowboy Museum’s Cowtown – which has a collection of historic homes shipped in from all across the USA – for a ride on a prairie wagon, a drink in a saloon and a Western style shoot-out.
It also has Sheplers which purports to be the biggest western store in the world. Stock up on cheap Levis and Wranglers, cheapish but elaborate cowboy boots.
Hatman Jacks is a famous hat shop where they’ve made hats for the TV show Dr Quinn Medicine Woman and even Pavarotti.
The art museum is pretty cool and innovative but The Keeper of the Plains, a 44-foot steel sculpture of a Kiowa-Comanche artist Blackbear Bison is the artwork to seek out (if this floats your boat the Chief Standing Bear in Standing Bear Park, Ponca City, is impressive too.
Wichita was also the place we bumped into some aerospace workers from Scotland and Ireland who took us for dinner and regaled with stories of their stay in the Mid West.
The best tale was the Scotsman who needed a map so he could pick up some pals from the airport and so popped into a small Wal Mart.
After asking several times for a road map and getting puzzled looks, he was eventually pointed in the direction of a senior assistant on a walking frame. “Yup, follow me, sir for a road map” and the pair hobbled slow-time to reach a hardware corner of the store.
The old timer reached for a mop. “Here you go sir, your road mop.”
Two nations divided by a common language? Of course – but that’s what makes the US and especially this big bit in the middle pretty special.
Buffalo steaks and offally good fries, the food of the Mid West – see the next edition of food monthly
Factfile
For further information including free travel guides, maps and event listings contact the Kansas & Oklahoma UK Information Service: email info@TravelKsOk.co.uk or call 08450 533 290. To request information or view travel guides online visit TravelKsOk.co.uk
American Airlines flies from London Heathrow to Kansas City, Oklahoma City and Tulsa via Chicago. For flight schedules and booking visit www.americanairlines.co.uk
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