Day 17
Wed 11th July Eastern Oklahoma
Nobody else here now. Decided we are on to a good thing so stay another day. We leave a spoor and drive up the road to check out Tahlequah where the Cherokee trail of tears ended. Now it is their government centre and not much sets it apart from any other american small town apart from its university.
Speak to some laconic older men sheltering from the noon heat up by the city hall gardens where the history of the modern cherokee is engraved in stone on the path. They say there hasnt been weather like this in their memory. ie its so wet there are floods everywhere and its so dry that the west is on fire and the swamps are burning down in Florida. Well we’re in the middle now so I can say with a little authority that the right hand side is not that apocalyptic.
Back to camp for a meal cooked by Hugh and a beautiful sunset and fire. Tomorrow we head north west. We’ve been 24 hrs from Tulsa for 3 days now so we are going there and hopefully we’ll see Oral Robert’s University on the way through.
This area is where they marched the Cherokee - in Tahlequah, about 25 miles north, the Trail of Tears ended and the new Cherokee nation was established. Sequoyah invented the Cherokee alphabet here. We drove up a pleasant road along the lake to Tahlequah, a strange mix of brokendown poorside malls and hokey oldtown. Further in still and we found jokey eateries and shops - Sam and Ella’s Chicken, Eclectic Chair etc then discovered it was also a university town. Hugh’s tooth still bothering him - needs regular painkillers. 3rd day of this approach. Very large winged bumbling insects doing kamekaze crotch dives into the moving cab. One each so far but I have to admit Hugh’s was much bigger.