We headed west out of Tupelo and picked up Mississippi 6. It’s a wonderful 4-lane divided highway with limited access.We have taken many 4-lane US highways and appreciate how under-utilized they are. I love riding on Sunday mornings before the breakfast and church crowds hit the road. We had the highways almost to ourselves.

The morning’s ride was on a series of back roads that headed generally west and allowed us to avoid going up to Memphis to pick up I-40. Our first destination was Clarksdale, MS and the Crossroads sign. This is on the Blues Highway and supposedly marks the spot where blues singer, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to achieve success. From there we continued west and crossed the Mississippi on US-49.

We eventually had to get on I-40, but before we got into super-slab mode we stopped for gas and lunch.

We just opened the throttles and made time on the Interstate. It was hot again today. We had a tiny, tiny shower, which didn’t get us wet enough to cool down. I did notice, however, that my tee-shirt was dry, not soaked. It occurred to me that the humidity was low enough for our wet vests to work. We stopped and soaked them and put them on. They kept us cool for a couple of hours.

We missed a couple of heavy rains as we passed through Arkansas, but as we approached Oklahoma City, I could see a wide area of dark rain clouds. I opened the radar app on my phone and could see three large rain systems right in front of us. Each system had a lot of yellow and red areas, depicting the heaviest of showers.

We stopped to put on our rain gear, hoping that doing so would hold off the rain.

The rain did miss us for quite awhile. We were able to visit the Oklahoma City Memorial.

We visited the Memorial in 2000, shortly after it opened. The trees weren’t so large as they are today. I think the trees soften the view of the chairs. Regardless of that assessment, the site is very moving.

We also had time to visit the first of several Route 66 sites – the Milk Bottle Grocery. We took a couple pictures and got back on the road to our hotel.

Between downtown Oklahoma City and our hotel we rode through some of the heaviest rain and wind we’ve ever encountered. We unpacked our stuff and set it out to dry. Our boots were dry, but rain found its way into our pants and jackets. Fortunately the hotel has a laundry and we were able to dry everything.

We had dinner at Louie’s in front of the hotel. My Road Glide friends who went on Gypsy Tour 3 will recognize the place.

Tomorrow we will recreate a little bit of Gypsy Tour 3 and travel a bit of old Route 66.