Last time I updated we were still in Houston. Since then, we went north to the Dallas area and stayed for three nights in Irving with Amy's friend Shannon. We saw some things in the Dallas area, including the place where JFK was shot and the Highland Park Village (which is apparently the first shopping mall in America). And we had some Steak 'n' Shake too (mmm, steakburger).

We left Irving on sunday and drove north to Tulsa to see Amy's mom. We saw a bit of Tulsa including some areas with huge multi-million-dollar homes. On monday we left Tulsa and visited Bixby where Amy's great-grandmother was buried a few months ago (she was about a week away from 105 years old when she died). We then took Route 66 to Claremore (a few miles northeast of Tulsa), just so we could say that we saw some of the famous road. Then we headed north through the backroads of Oklahoma, and then into Kansas, to Eureka where Amy was born. We visited the community hospital which was pretty quiet on a monday evening.

We had originally considered staying somewhere in Eureka, but we didn't see any place that really jumped out at us. So we continued west a bit more until we got to the El Dorado State Park, on the shore of El Dorado Lake. We drove around the campsites and selected one that was reasonably flat and quiet. Unfortunately, it was also fairly unprotected and there was a constant wind coming from the southeast all night. We had set the alarm for 6:45 in order to get up to see the sunrise at 7:05. All night the wind was blowing and rattling the tent around, and we also had to reinflate the air mattress several times during since it seems to have a leak in it somewhere (it didn't leak the last time we used it).

When the alarm went off this morning, we also heard a rumbling in the distance that didn't sound like traffic or a train. We found that we were indeed still in Kansas and it was a thunderstorm! The lightning was incredible and we got several great pictures. But it was certainly going to start raining any moment so we quickly packed everything in the car and got the tent down just as the rain started. It's a good thing we decided to get up early otherwise everything would have been really wet!

We continued west to Wichita, got gas for $2.65 per gallon (the cheapest we've seen so far), and stopped for breakfast. There is no wireless available in this Denny's, so I'll save this for now and post it later when we have a net connection.

Now we're in Dodge City, KS and found a nice dry motel for the night. With internet. The weather report shows thunderstorm and tornado warnings around where we were last night, so it's a good thing that we got this far west when we did!

Tomorrow, we're off north to meet up with I-70 and perhaps to camp in Goodland, KS. If the weather cooperates. If not, we figure it's not worth potentially getting drenched, just to camp.