The Perfect Nap

Eat again. This afternoon upon arriving in OKC and checking into the hotel I experience something that I rarely get to do...nap. I laid across the king size bed and drifted gently asleep while Set was out doing something. I slept nearly hour and I woke up on my own. It was like the best birthday or Christmas gift ever. It was better than shopping (can you believe something could be better than shopping), better than that three letter word? No, wait a minute, no not that good, but I want to do it again nap that is, again and again or at least tomorrow.

The Rock Cafe

 

The famous Rock Cafe. Certinaly the largest tourist attraction in Stroud. Featured in DDD, featured in the movie "CARS" and listed as Stroud's "Business of the year" by a large plastic banner strung up outside. I'll bet that banner stays there all the time not just this year.

Not much to look at. We can't figure out of this is classified as a diner or a dive.

The menu was simply 2 zeroxed pages stapled together and quite wrikled and "used":

The decor was mostly pine and artifacts from the time the resturant was burned down last year. They rebuilt over the past year and really have done a pretty good job of making it look new but retaining the old character.

The food really is great. Their main twist is basic diner fare but with a german twist. EAT had Jaggersnitzel and spatzel and I had the hot meat plate (which the cook calls "heartattack on a plate"). EAT's food was basically a pounded flat boneless pork chop, breaded and fried accompanied by spatzel (a german dumpling) which in addition to being boiled had been fried crispy on the flat top. That was all covered by what seemed to be a mushroom red-eye gravy.  Quite tasty.

 

My dish basically a hamburger patty on texas toast that was covered with onions, mushrooms, and a helping of curly fries and then that whole lot was doused in brown gravy.

The funny thing is that at first I thought my meat patty was completly unseasoned. It blended quite well with the gravy but I couldn't believe that they did not even put salt in the meat. I thought EAT's dish tasted great from the start. So many flavors. I thought she had made the better choice But about half way through the dish EAT asked me to trade with her and I started to understand why. The red-eye gravy was great but very rich. After a while it got on your nerves and really reduced your enjoyment. The blandness of the meat in my dish tempered the grease of the fries and the brown gravy to the point that it finished much better leaving you with a strong desire for more.  

But both dishes were great. My recommdation is to order both and share!

We finished with a bread pudding.

It is pretty unusual to see bread pudding on a diner menu and this thing looked like a cinnamon roll. The thing was that is was totally devoid of sweetness! We thought something was wrong until we realized that it was made of both white AND rye bread. Once we realized that and recognized the rye flavor it was a great dish. Bread pudding doesn't HAVE to be a sugar bomb. This was great.

So that was lunch, now on to OKC and dinner.

Oh yeah, just as we were leaving we were overrun by a corvette club from calafornia. This Rock Cafe really does have a name for itself.

Embarking on the trip - SET

So it's Monday morning. EAT wakes up at 3am to let the stupid grey cat out. I get woke up at 5 am to let one of the stupid white cats out, Why is it that the cats can't all go in and out at the same time? We are very diligent to make sure the cats are out of the house at bed time but April gets in late and they rush the door when she comes in. That's all well and good for a while but then their nocturnal side kicks in and they want to go back out to hunt who knows what and leave it on my patio (it is a regular killing fields around our house, birds, mice, rabbits, bats, large insects....) and they make a pest of themselves until one of us gets up and lets them out. But they never can seem to get themselves coordinated to all go in and out at the same time so it turns into a two or three time event during the night. No wonder I never get enough sleep it seems.

We have told April time and time again to not let them in when she comes home (I think she is part vampire because she stays out so late. Could there be a vegetarian vampire?) but her latest thing is "but they are sooo cute!".  Maybe, but it is getting a bit annoying.

But after our broken night's sleep we finally get up at 7am to start our trip and promptly roll over and go back to sleep. It is vacation after all!  So we wake up again at about 8:15. I run around the house gathering, packing and doing some last min household business EAT does her hair and makeup. Imagine that, I am basically unprepared and trying to catch up quick and EAT is totally packed and mostly just sitting around trying to figure out what to wear.

I go outside and start loading up our "steed" the Avalanche.

And we hit the road at 10:15.... Don't ask what happened to the two hours....

We go and do one little chore and then get on down to Stroud for our first stop the "Rock Cafe". But when we first get to Stroud I just had do see what was left of the "Outlet Malls Of America" that was distroyed by the 1999 F5 tornado that just about wiped Stroud off the map. Here is the picture I got of the Mall:

 

 This is what is left of the outlet malls. A slab of concrete. Ignore that building in the background it is not on the outlet mall property and was built after the tornado.I bring this up because I had the opportunity to go down the turnpike two days after the tornado hit and this is exactly what I saw with the exception that there was not grass in the cracks. Really, it was totally bare all of the buildings were just gone. Nothing has changed in these 10 years this is exactly how it looked on that day in 1999. Them F5's are powerfull stuff. In fact I drove around and found just about the only thing that was left standing.

The order menu board from the wendys that use to be there. Again this is exactly how it looked after the tornado in 1999. It is totally weird that this sign survived but the BUILDING WAS GONE!

So off we went to Stroud trusting our faithful garmin. But you know you really have to program in the right address the first time. We put in the address 114 Main and ended up in Kendrick:

This did not look like the Rock Cafe! Amazing what a little thing like the "W" in "114 W Main" does to those silly little GPS systems. We were off course about 9 miles in the middle of nowhere and even got the pleasure of checking out some of the local roads that were a little less than paved:

And we got to see some of the wackier locals:

But it all got better when we finally found the Rock Cafe.

The Avalanche

Eat speaks at last! This morning we begin the vacation' in Set's truck.
The question is does his truck qualify as a "truck". This huge thing I've named Brutes has 5 disk CD player, satellite radio, on star, and a sunroof. It also has bucket seats, a extended cab (like whatever that means). No this is no truck, its a SUV with a really long trunk. No my Dad had a truck! No power steering, no anti-locking breaks, no air condition', no seat belts or airbags,  now that was a truck! A steering wheel so big you got a upper body out just turning the corner. You had to pump the breaks, or you never stop in time, you even has to crank the window to cool off and on the passenger side you had to use a pair of pliers to get  the window down, just the sweet nostalgia of the shimmer and shake  that truck would make when you went over 35MPH. Yes that was a "truck"1 But as we are gliding along the Turner turnpike, I am happy that we are not driving the mustang, these buckets seats sure are comfy after all.