Ft Smith to Norman, Oklahoma

Through downtown Ft Smith in the daylight, workers making it pretty

a fountain in the morning breeze

old brick, most in good shape and occupied

clearly the edge of the west

Across the Arkansas River where steamboats once ran

 And down a country road with the usual attractions.

Gas wells in the fields, later oil and gas

opportunities for local cuisine

I drove south from Sallisaw through Keota and McCurtain, the land surprisingly treed and hilly - the end of the Ouachita mountains trailing off to the south -  not like the dust bowl Oklahoma I imagined.

 Saw the first of many oil wells in Oklahoma.

On impulse, I turned south at Lequire on Hwy 82 to drive through the Sanbois Mountains, tail end of the Ouichita Mountains and, despite the name, covered with a pretty red oak-hickory-pine forest.

I was thinking there were fewer roadside churches, maybe because there are fewer people living out here, but when I came out of the mountains, what do you know, not only the Cowboy church somewhere back in those hills, but a couple of others.  You just never know.

 Oklahoma is no slouch for trailer houses, seemed like as many as Kentucky, this one a newer, and nicer, one

Through more small towns, people a long way from anywhere, then Wilburton, a metropolis of several thousand, an enormous cemetery and, surprise, a college.

Through McAlester, where someone dreamed large in brick, the land slowly opening up, getting drier, but still rolling and with plenty of trees.

On  through Stuart, Calvin, Holdenville to Seminole, nice murals, more houses along the highway

 to the outskirts of Norman and mushrooms of suburbs and suburban malls.  Rush hour,  I skirted the city center and drove north to friend Anne's for a peaceful night in her lovely guesthouse.