This is the way to Amarillo

You won’t find Heavy Traffic Way on a conventional map, but it is the road on which Siri Google instructs us to drive as we exit Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Heavy Traffic Way is, of course, a recommendation for trucks and overflow and it indicates a sort of service road parallel to the highway.

Post rush hour, the Tulsa roads are fairly quiet so far as traffic is concerned on this cool Thursday morning. But for wheels, they’re noisy. We rattle forth past mini storage facilities, lawyer’s advertisements, casino signs and the usual run of commerce and out into the countryside.

Oh, look, oil wells. Three in one field. Aren’t they little things.

Vultures are circling in the sky. We’re passing low woodlands and pastures now. The trees have assumed the soft hues of autumn - luscious limes, soft glows of orange and beams of yellow. It is just lovely.

The traffic is pretty solid in both directions, moving with the determination of the long-haul traveller. Trucks and grey nomad caravans. Serene cattle graze in the fields, oblivious to the steady rumble of passing humans.

Oh, another oil well chugging up and down. This one painted bright orange and black. They don’t want us to miss it.

The other sort of drilling is out there, too. Water wells. And wooden telegraph poles stretch out over the landscape. It is really quite busy out there.

Uh-oh. Here comes a toll booth. $4 please. Beside the tool booth a huge sign bids us to Remember Our Troops.

We are entering the Sac and Fox Indian Reservation.

Another sign: What is Killing Our Soldiers?

Skimming along the highway now, past exits to Stroud and Drumright.

And signs announcing the Infant Jesus of Prague National Shrine.

Prague. Next right.

What? My head spins. My mother adored the Infant Jesus of Prague and I have her treasured, time-battered statue. What on earth is the connection with Oklahoma?

I summon Professor Google and discover that Prague is a place is Oklahoma. Since 1949 it has had a shrine to the Infant Jesus of Prague. A Carmelite sanctuary where special services are held and people come to pray in peace. It has a fantastic gift shop, says Google.

I’d love to go and investigate but we are already way down the road and Bruce does not share my sentiments.

He is more interested in the sudden change in vegetation.

The landscape has become drier, the vegetation twiggier.

There goes Walkingstick Ranch. Wonderful name. It is a registered breeder of Angus Bulls.

A huge, huge, huge sign. Gross, really. It advertises Kickapoo Casino coming up at Exit 158. Oh, the irony of the next sign: Don’t Trash Oklahoma. Yeah, with big casino signs.

The landscape continues quite bucolic. Grazing cattle. Fields dotted with hay bales. Oh, and a dairy factory.

We are now entering Kickapoo Nation.

We scoot under a large overpass which is strikingly, nay, beautifully and very surprisingly adorned with colourful Native American motifs.

Lowland lakes and green pastures whiz past beside us. Another oil well out there pumping away - and a sign saying God Bless America.

We overtake a husband and wife moving-house convoy. Two big rental trucks, one towing a sports car loaded to the brim with what obviously couldn’t fit in the trucks. We wonder where they are coming from, where they are going and why. People do a lot of moving in this vast and varied country. Labor mobility has always been one of America’s strengths.

Another change in the landscape. Shrublands.

It is a low, lovely mixed forest of pinion pines, junipers, ponderosa pines, elms, cedars… The colours and textures of the different trees is very pleasing. The hints of autumn colours soft and pretty.

Exits point to Wichita and Oklahoma city. We go straight on, suddenly amid overpasses in all directions. Phew. Daunting. Busy.

And another toll station. Exact Change! $1.15 this one.

Refreshment signs prompt us to turn off for a caffeine and loo break.

We’re in the outskirt burbs of Oklahoma City.

A beautiful big Barnes & Noble beckons.

Ooh, it is all scented with pumpkin spice. We order what they called Doppio Macchiatos, Starbucks answer to macchiato. The children’s book section is en route to the nice clean loo.

It is so vivid and busy and inviting. As for the loo, America is brilliant for high standard rest rooms, so very many of them equipped with seat covers. Yes, paper covers for reassuring hygiene. I love it. I wish to hell Australia could pick up on it. I wish Australia was more civilized about loos generally.

Back on Route 40, which is still much recalled and celebrated as Route 66, we pass more dormitory suburbs of Oklahoma city, expanses of grey rooftops, fields, oil wells, scruffy crops.

Exits to Yukon and Bethany.

More grey rooftops.

Speed limit: maximim 70 mph. minimum 50 mph.

The biggest mini storage facility ever. Mega mini. Racks of storage units large and small. Even ones for RVs.

Oklahoma City lies ahead. It is a flat, broad city.

We don’t go in. We swing off on a wide, rough highway to Amarillo.

Amarillo is our destination for tonight. I sing the Neil Sedaka song Is This The Way to Amarillo. Bruce does not know it. I am a dreadful singer. He still does not know it.

There’s a sparkling strip of accommodation and food. The usual suspects.

A sign says Yukon.

A wooden fort structure looking like something from a rustic theme park advertises it self as The Dental Depot - Get Braces Here Saturday.

We’re in Cheyenne and Arapaho country now. These two tribes are unified. Much of Oklahoma is Indian-owned, explains Bruce.

The landscape now is flattening out - way, way, way out.

This is the wide open plains. And it is not oil wells we are seeing. It is wind farms. Vast wind farms.

There are green crops out there. A shallow lake. Cattle. And huge, slowly spinning windmills.

Roadside ads bellow the imminence of a Cherokee products Trading Station. One after another. Beads, baskets, caps, blankets, pipes they promise in one huge sign after another.

We go on past Calumet, past motor homes, past groves of fat pines…

A gusty wind buffets the car. The temperature outside is only 66degF

Here is Roman Nose State Park. We smile. With Bruce’s little pug nose, they’d never let him in.

The landscape of sparse trees and green fields turns back into lovely broad flat plains. Big sky.

Let’s Go to Clinton, says a sign.

We pass Weatherford. There’s an Air and Space Museum out there. Wow. Who would have thought it.

It is more wind farms we see.

More and more wind farms!

In both directions. As far as the eye can see. Great big arms steadily rolling.

Who would believe that this used to be oil country, remarks Bruce incredulously. Who would believe the transformation. Who knew the scale of the wind industry in Oklahoma?

The prairie continues, undulating grass.

And exit to Custer City.

Oh, and here is the Cherokee Trading Post of all those signs. We don’t stop.

The signs are now inviting us to Clinton. Let’s Go to Clinton they say. Clinton: Unique Destination. Picture of little happy family in a car. We’re here, says another sign. And so we are.

We pull in for late lunch at a Braum’s. I have a bowl of chili and a green salad and then we do the naughty thing we have craved at this fabulous family diary business. We buy ice cream. I have cherry amaretto which has huge, succulent chunks of cherry and a cherry almond flavour, oh smooth and rich and wicked. Seriously, seriously good. Bruce goes for the healthy alternative. His peanut butter and chocolate ice cream has no sugar. Hmm.

And off we go, back among the trucks and heavy transports which cross the USA day and night in vast numbers

. Oh, and the grey nomads. Mobile homes towing cars or boats are the truckers; nightmare. Ours, too, sometimes.

We pass Canute. We also pass a huge truck whence a Sikh driver beams down upon us with glinting white teeth. His truck is carrying Punjabi goods.

Ah, and just to think this road most famously was The Great Western Cattle Trail.

Another massive empire of wind farms appears. Beautiful. I love the aesthetic of them. They adorn the great prairie with wheeling white grace. Right over the horizon.

The prairie itself is prettying up with yellow wildflowers.

Amarillo is Spanish for yellow, says Bruce. The town was named for the yellow flowers. And it used to pronounced in the Spanish style, Amariyo.

Natural gas wells turn up in the prairie roadside.

This is helium country, announced Bruce. It is mixed in the natural gas.

Once this was the only source of helium in the world, he says. It shouldn’t be wasted on balloons. It is rare. It is a finite resource. The national helium reserve is around here somewhere. Helium is very important for many things - for scientific and technological things like medical imaging and super-conducting magnets. It should not be wasted in toy balloons. Bruce frowns.

Good farmland out there. A huge snack-food factory out there in the fields. Hmm. Mini storage. A big, colourful derrick. Groups of cheap housing. Sports fields. Sheds. Open land. Prairie grass.

The city of Magnum comes - and goes. Magnum looks mini.

Farmland and cultivated red soil.

More natural gas.

There is enough natural gas here to last 500 years, says Bruce.

Sayre appears with its university campus. Out of town a huge sewage plant.

Speed limit: maximum 70mph, minimum 40mph

Washita Battlefield. More of Sayre. It’s quite a spread-out town.

Now a town called Erick.

Small farms. Cotton crop.

The sky is big and light and bright with tufts of cloud.

The yellow wildflowers are appearing again. Prettiness.

And amid the landscape a vast chunk of heavy land clearance. Heavens, about 30 people are wandering about out there in the ploughed field.They look as if they are looking for something.

Oh, look. There’s a road runner on the verge. I saw a road runner! I saw a road runner!

Fields of cattle. Now cotton crops. Big cotton crops.

And the Texas State line.

We are entering the panhandle of north Texas.

Only 104 more miles to Amarillo.

We pass a redneck truck with a sign Hillary For Prisoner 2016 on the side window.

Black Angus cattle, stockyards, cattle…

Shamrock municipal airport…dry, sparse lands

George Bush country, this, says Bruce.

Turnoffs to Wheeler and Wellington.

This is the Texas that looks like Australia, reflects Bruce.

Cattle.

Bluegreen ground cover that looks like saltbush now covers the land. There are horses in pens.

A town called McLean - out on the plain. Does the rain in McLean fall mainly on the plain? An oil well, grey rolls of neglected hay, cotton fields, cotton fields, big cotton fields. Town of Alanreed, sadly over there, bypassed by the road.

Route 66 signs. The glory days of Route 66 were destroyed by the building of 1-40. Many towns lost their traffic.

There’s a State Wind Farm. It is huge. And stationary.

But a fantastic vista of rock-pitted landscape opens up. A rest stop beside a rise in the road offers a spectacular overlook of it all. It is packed with parked trucks, the truckies all resting with the view. Nice.

Those dry steam beds are called arroyos here, says Bruce, of the twisted gullies snaking over the landscape.

And onwards we forge - an array of dead turbines, eerie to see all those still windmills, like a forest of spiky statues.

But there are moving ones on the horizon.

Here we go again. Vast, vast wind farms. Renewable energy is the new oil of Texas and Oklahoma, eh? Who knew?

Fields of sorghum. Cotton. Silos.

Wind farms. Cattle sprinkled out among the turbines.

Hay fields. Cotton. Irrigation sprinklers spread across the land.

It is really quite spectacular.

The linear shapes, the sharp white lines of the turbines, the sprinklers, the bright blue sky…

Turbines to the edge of

the world and miles of cotton beneath them.

Miles and miles.

Farms come and go. Turbines. Cotton.

Prairie.

Horsemen riding along out there. Oh, Texas. Picturebook.

Traffic intensifies as we head toward Amarillo. Silos. Trains. Cement median strip.

Sign: 2752 deaths on Texan roads this year.

The Route 66 Saloon.

And here comes Amarillo. At last. Hello Marriott Residence Inn. Phew. Good to stretch the legs.