A Day Off in Bartlesville, OK! Home of Conoco-Phillips Oil, a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and an incredibly hospitable church here, the Adams Blvd Church of Christ. Today I may also go to "Woolaroc," ranch of Frank Phillips with lots of Native American artifacts and animals.
Yesterday, Melanie, Emily B., and I played a game called "Wow, we only have a 40 mile day today!" This game is designed to make an 80 mile day seem much less hard. After our lunch stop at mile 40, we pretended that we had just started biking for the day, and gosh, did our leaders think we were wimps or something, just giving us 40 miles to do today?? This made the time pass fairly quickly, and though it had been threatening rain all day, the heavens did not open until we were only about five miles away from Bartlesville on our "40 mile day." There has been an incredible flow of rainfall in Oklahoma over the last couple of weeks, and we could see as we were biking that the rivers and ditches were overflowing their banks. Not until we biked through the flash flood coming into Bartlesville did we really realize why! It was SUPER FUN! Like stomping in puddles when you are six, careening through huge puddles on your bike, with warm rain pounding all around you. I had not been feeling so great all day (I think I am coming down with a cold), but that last five miles made me come in beaming because it was so hilarious that we were biking through these kind of conditions.
I think I am plateau-ing a bit in regard to biking. I am starting to feel a bit of the compulsory nature inherent in doing a bike trip as opposed to a bike ride - there are no choices really - you have to bike to the next town. There's no other option. And you don't always feel happy to be sitting on your bike seat for 5-6 hours. It is a lot of exercise. So I need to recover my joy in biking since I only have a month left! And of course I am still so incredibly happy to be doing this, don't get me wrong. Just some days are easier than others.
The terrain is changing rapidly now that we are Oklahoma (and will continue to change as we get close to Colorado Springs, where Mom is coming to visit me ! ! !). The Ozarks were, while only baby mountains compared to the Smokies where we cut our teeth, quite steep and more intense than I was expecting. We had a few climbs that had me breathing heavy, though I am happy to report that I almost never stop biking now on any climbs after my Appalachian training. My tan is incredible. My arms have turned to what I would describe as a nut brown, almond in particular, the outside of the almond. Melanie is so funny because her skin is so fair that she looks like the creamy inside of the almond, except she gets pink every single day! While I continue to get more and more mocha colored. Soon I will look like one of those ladies in Florida (NOT you Aunt Diane!!) who lay out all the time and have brown leathery skin. Unfortunately.
The Ozarks were beautiful, though not as beautiful as the Smokies to my eye. They were smaller, more rolling. More nice farmland though (the refrain of this journey). We went through a mini-Gatlinburg in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, complete with about 14 wedding chapels. It is apparently the Little Switzerland of the Ozarks. There were many themed hotels. I mean themed in their architecture, either Tudor style or Victorian style, but everything a bit overdone. There is a trolley that stops at every hotel to take people from place to place along the one road through Eureka Springs.
A very exciting day was crossing into Oklahoma because we got to cross into Missouri too! The whole group stayed together (mostly) throughout the day so we have some awesome pictures from the state lines.
Tomorrow I'm having dinner with my Aunt Jane and Uncle Perry, which I think I already said somewhere, and then we're off - only one more week until my visit with Mom in Colorado Springs, and then only two more weeks until we're there in San Diego!
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