Chandler To Conway, MO

The stay at the rest area in Chandler was pretty good.  The guy I met the night before commented that, as big as the parking lot was, come nightfall it would fill up completely.  Boy was he right.  We were in the back row of three rows of the outbound  side and when I awoke in the morning there were so many trucks and RV’s in there they were even parralel parked behind our rig all down the aisle.  It was quite amazing to see the procession of trucks coming and going starting about 0600.

We were on the road as usual at 0800, with today being the shortest of our legs for this portion at 270 miles.

Our only rest stop enroute was for fuel.  Oklahoma and Missouri are the cheapest locations for fuel so I planned stops in both States to keep the tank full.  With the fuel card we are still seeing our prices at $3.00 a gallon.  Once we cross in to Illinois and Indiana and points East the price will go up ten to twenty cents a gallon.  Still cheaper than Canadian prices so I will fill up for the last time before we cross the border in a few weeks.

For regular readers of the blog you may recall we stopped at a rest area for an overnight stay on November 12 last year on the way to Arizona.  This rest area we were destined to in Conway is the mirror image of that one and has an identical configuration.  It is well laid out, well lit and although there are a few rows of parking stalls for transport trucks it is not nearly as busy as the one in Chandler.  The nice thing about this rest area and the one on the westbound lane is there are dedicated RV parking lanes that are not able to be used for anyone other than RV’s.

One of the things that is very impressive about the welcome centre itself is the floor has the kind of floor used in schools and hospitals (I don’t know what it is called) that is inlaid with all the States and major cities that Route 66 goes through on its way across the country.  I tried to take some pictures to piece them together but could not find a way to get the right perspective.  Here is one example.

The drive to Conway was uneventful although the roads were rough around Tulsa, and I have noticed the main interstate routes are typically pretty good with either concrete or new asphalt.  It is the ten or so miles leading into a metropolitan area and the ten on the other side that are miserable.  The transition between asphalt to the concrete surface where there is a bridge is usually bad enough you end up anticipating the bump before you hit it.

We have been making out with good prices on fuel so far on this trip and so stopped twice in Missouri on the way through to capitalize on the cheaper fuel there.  Once you cross the border in to Illinois and beyond the prices jump about 25 to 30 cents a gallon, and taking fuel close to the border will carry me through until we cross the border back in to Canada.  I will then top off with fuel because the taxes in Canada put the fuel price up quite a bit higher.

Thank you for stopping by to read.