Heading east to the start and meeting friends

Unlike Lewis & Clark (L&C), we have 2/3 of the country to get across just to start their journey! Since we are interested in spending our time on the L&C trail, we are trying to make time getting to the start.
On Monday May 11, we got off to an early start and made it all the way to Flagstaff Arizona, 470 miles from home. Flagstaff is a nice town with great weather, being at over 7000 ft altitude. It also has great shopping and we use it to stock up on groceries. I also found out 2 years ago that my cousin Barbara Beckman Johnson, lives in Flagstaff. So Pris, Barbara and I had dinner to get caught up on history. The last time we had seen each other was when her father took their family to my grand parent’s 50th wedding anniversary in Florida. She was a junior in high school and I was a sophomore then! Only 51 years ago! We had a great time finding out what can happen in such a short time. We agreed that we both had not aged at all in that time.
We then headed east on I-40, spending the next two nights in Blue Water State Park and Santa Rosa State Park, in New Mexico. We dry camped at both and had them to ourselves.
We had intended to spend the next night at a State Park south of Amarillo Texas, but it was full, so we headed further east into Oklahoma. We stayed at lovely Foss Lake State Park, about 50 miles east of the Texas border and 7 miles north of I-40. They also supplied entertainment, as within 3 hours of arriving the tornado alert siren sounded and we headed to the shelter (concrete bathrooms that look like bomb shelters). The wind howled and the rain was horizontal for 45 minutes, but no tornadoes were sighted. At 3:30 the next morning, another storm cell came through the area and almost blew the RV over. We got up and dressed, just in case we got another alert, but it never came. So we went back to bed at 4:30. We were so tired and the wind and rain were still present when we woke up, that we decided to stay put one more day at Foss Lake. Good thing we did, since the wind blew hard until mid afternoon.
On Sunday May 17, we headed off to Tulsa, to see another friend Donna S. We last saw Donna in Seattle in 2007, on our way back from Alaska. She and George have moved to Tulsa and are living in a lovely downtown apartment/loft, in a 1920s art deco building. Tulsa was having a “Mayfest” celebration down town, so we had a festive afternoon. The photo was taken in their elevator lobby.
On Monday, we were off to Branson Missouri to see another cousin, Ronny Beckman. We haven’t seen Ronny since the mid 60s and we had a lot of catching up to do. The photo shows John and Ronny. Ronny is the one with the grey beard. Branson is an interesting town, with lots of entertainment, hotels and restaurants. I would liken it to a mid western Las Vegas.