Next day we were up early, ate breakfast and were back on IH-35, though not for long. Just north of Oklahoma City we turned east on IH-44. It was a long smooth road for the most part with gently rolling hills and a lot of flat areas and grass. Tall grass grew everywhere. Not familiar with that area or hazards that prairie fires presented, I was confused for awhile at the signs every few miles that said "Do Not Drive Into Smoke". We drove on for awhile and breezed right on through Tulsa. It been a long time and I'm not sure about some parts of my memory, but it seems like between OK City and Tulsa was a toll road. I can remember there not being much in the way of places to gas up or eat, but that there was a gas station and restaurant halfway between those two cities and we took the opportunity to stop and get gas and switch drivers.

After hitting the road again and getting through Tulsa, the next big city was Joplin, Missouri. When we crossed the Oklahoma state line it was the first time any of us had ever been in Missouri. So far it had been a good and interesting trips with nothing out of the ordinary happening except all the new scenery and states and big cities we had never been in before. Having crossed the Mississippi River at New Orleans several times and again at Memphis, I was looking forward to the bridge at St Louis. All these bridges are huge and majestic and I knew it would be a good sight looking at the river from those heights.

ADD: I looked it up and indeed there were tollways on both sides of Tulsa. The one heading toward St Louis was called the Will Rogers Tollway. I remembered the toll, but my mind told me that Illinois was the only state in recent memory that collected money from vehicles that the U.S. taxpayers had already paid for.