Cross Country – 3

From one musical venue to another. . .curiosity drove us to check out Branson, Missouri. Part of the town, called Branson Landing, is situated on the bank of the river with a few hotels, a large shopping center and a fountain. Each hour on the hour there is a water show, and, at 10:00 p.m. each night the water show includes a playing of The Star Spangled Banner. The really commercial section of the town is a long road with theatres, restaurants and hotels along either side, not particularly attractive but very effective. We stayed at a hotel at The Landing, which provided easy access to restaurants and one of the best ice cream cones I have had in a while! Steve missed out as he chose not to go on a walk with me.

With our primary reason for visiting Branson being attending a musical performance, we had selected a show called Rock ‘n Roll Royalty. We heard extremely good musical renditions of The Everly Brothers, Connie Francis, Frankie Vallie, Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Roy Orbison, Carole King, Elton John, Sting and, of course, The King. . .Elvis, all performed by three musicians! Apparently Elvis finished his shows with a patriotic tribute, and, that is how the Branson show ended.

Leaving Branson it was a fairly short drive to Tulsa, Oklahoma. There are a number of important things that happened in Tulsa, the most important being that Steve was born in Tulsa! Tulsa was also the oil capital of the world during most of the 20th century. In 1898 Tulsa was incorporated as a frontier town on Indian territory with the boundaries of three Indian nations – the Osage, Creek and Cherokee – coming together in Tulsa. With the discovery of oil the population grew to over 18,000 by 1910 and over 141,000 by 1930. Skelley, Phillips and Getty all left their marks on this city, to include art deco architectural treasures as well as charitable foundations to fund education, the arts, religion, health care and human services.

While we do not think of oil wells as particularly picturesque, they certainly contributed to the wealth of Tulsa.

Downtown Tulsa has some great buildings, but, like many downtown areas, once business is done for the day, it becomes a quiet area. We did enjoy going to a rooftop restaurant that one of the locals directed us to, and, we also drove the city. Although planning to stay for two nights, we opted to spend the next night in Stillwater, where Steve grew up. As it happened, his high school class was meeting for lunch at a local restaurant, so, we joined the group. In the evening we had dinner with a class mate and her husband at Mexico Joe’s, an extremely popular local restaurant, a “relative” of the original restaurant, Eskimo Joe’s, which is well known. The Tulsa World reported that the Eskimo Joe’s T-shirts are the #2 most collectible T-shirts in the world behind the Hard Rock Cafe T-shirts. . .who would have guessed.

Stillwater is home to Oklahoma State University, Steve’s alma mater and site of the famous Theta Pond.

While driving through Oklahoma City, Steve shared that there were two important inventions that took place in Oklahoma City, one being the shopping cart and the other being the parking meter. Next stop. . .Dallas.