Oklahoma through to West Memphis, Arkansas.

Away from the Grand, grand, Grand Canyon and Sedona: headed east.  Captivated by the rawness of Arizona, the energy of the rocks, canyons, dry bed rivers, and sparse landscape, it would have been hard to have pulled myself away, but my trusty driver saw the land as barren and a schedule ahead of us.  Into the RV and eastward we go.

The landscape changed, would one say dramatically when there were hundreds of miles rolling by, but it would seem that traveling in a particular type of landscape was going to last for a while, I would look down at my crocheting, camera, or map and when I looked up it had changed again.  From the arid dryness of Arizona, travels have now brought us through the flooded rivers, creeks, and fields of eastern Oklahoma and across Arkansas today.  At the Oklahoma Travel Center, the annual Oklahoma Annual State travel directory screamed with boldness and belief in itself, Come Here! Visit here!  Love us - we are beautiful and you will soon know it!  On the other hand, the Natural State, modest Arkansas produced an efficiently beautiful travel book the size of a readers digest, saying, "Well, here's a bit about us, if you are interested you will find out that we are a pretty interesting place with a lot to offer.  Here's how you get around."  I actually have now spent more time in the Arkansas book that Oklahoma but, I have a lot of Oklahoma information that I am intent on absorbing, just not sure when as we move across this landscape.

Flooding.

Thunderstorms and Tornado watches caused us to hold back heading east for a couple of days.
When we finally started to move, we saw lots of evidence of the storms that had passed through ahead of us.

When asking for an Arkansan Tourism magazine, the woman at the Travel Center,
looked up and me and said, "Just passing through?"  "Yes."
Rt 40 is one of the major East/West routes and heavily traveled.
This day, Tues, the majority of the traffic had ten wheels,
and along the route we saw a lot of tractor-trailer dealers.

Often passed clusters of ten wheelers that ranged from 4 or 5  to 10 to 12. 

Last week, it was land as far as the eye could see,
 this week, worked farmland as far as the eye could see.

Working the farmland.  Insect hatches now attached to the windshield.  

The Farms.

We waited an extra day in Arizona and saw evidence of the storms that passed ahead of us.

That's standing water in a field.

The bright yellow fields of flowers turned out to be Canola.
The plants are baled green then transported for processing into Canola oil.
The yellow fields were beautiful and cheerful.

Canola fields in the distance.

Dry camping is allowed at Cracker Barrels, Walmarts and a few other places.
 Often the views were great from these locations, on the edge of town with green fields and mountains in the distance.
This night, somewhere in Oklahoma, there were green fields and sun had set behind the trees in the distance
but on the overpass nearby it would reflect off the tractor trailers on the overpass.
It was like a truck parade and by the time I took this photo, the reflections had already begun to diminish.