Recouping from Texas to Oklahoma - Day 7

It's the end of the first full week and I am finally feeling refreshed after a casual driving day that put miles behind me and rested my fatigued muscles.

I went North out of Odessa heading toward a scenic drive recommended by the National Geographic Scenic Highways and Byways book. The route to the drive brought me past active oil fields, cotton crops and many Texas Longhorn cattle. Since leaving Phoenix, I had not encountered such extensive use of the fields. It is also the first time I have been surrounded by so much flat land that I could see to the horizon in every direction unimpeded by any hills or mountains. Which means that after about of a half hour of all of it, it gets boring.

Fortunately, I had the scenic drive to break up the monotony. Often these drives have hikes or attractions and can take quite a while, but this was truly just a scenic drive. I sped 60 miles across varied agriculture, then down one side of a small colorful canyon and up the other side. And there was a pretty lake in the middle too. And that was about it for the driving excitement.

I ended up in Clinton, OK for the night at the cheapest hotel in town, but hey they have free WiFi which is my only requirement. But the reason I am in Clinton is because it is home to Jiggs Smokehouse. I went into this little shack of a restaurant and ordered the house favorite brisket sandwich. To be honest, I've had better. The brisket was a bit dry, but the sauce was superb, making it a pretty good meal (2 meals because it was so big.) I did not order the "Kitchen Sink". The Road Food authors described it as, "a somewhat ridiculous combo of beef, sausage and ham sandwiched between-are you ready?-a pair of sirloin steaks." Atkins heaven.

The real reason for going to Jiggs', wasn't for a meal anyway. It was for their famous beef jerky. For $17 I bought a pound of it. They only have one flavor and don't need more. It is like eating a shoe. If you are successful enough to separate a bite from the slab, you then need to soak it in your mouth for a little while to get it soft enough to chew. This is exactly my opinion of what the perfect jerky should be.

I haven't figured out what comes next, but it looks like the weather is going to get sloppy here in OK, so the option of finding a place to camp out in tomorrow will be determined by the weather.