Short riding day but lots to see before you leave Pawnee. After yesterday's 76 hard miles, most of the people just wanted to take a shower, find a good dinner and hit the bed. We filled the Pecan Grove Motel with the spillover going to the Antique Inn B&B. The owner was going to be busy the next day, so the second "B" didn't count. He did tell us that we would only pay for the beds we messed up.

Fortunately for the carnivores, Thursday is steak night at both of the restaurants in town where something like 22 ounces of sirloin with a baked potato and a trip to the salad bar was going for only $9.99. Since Pawnee is on Indian land, there wasn't even sales tax added to the tab. After dinner, most of us strolled the four-block long brick main street with its authentic 1890's style storefronts to work off dinner. Pawnee looks more like a movie set than a real town and you half expect to see John Wayne come gimping down the street.

Since there was no need for a lunch at Ingalls, it was decided that the tour would pay for breakfast at Miss Lillie's the next morning. Their Two-fer special was two eggs, two slices of sausage and your choice of two pancakes or two biscuits with gravy for $2.99; and when was the last time you paid only fifty cents for coffee.

Pawnee is famous for two Bills and a Chester. Actually, the Bills were William Cody and George Lillie who are better known as Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill. Pawnee was also the birthplace of Chester Gould who drew the Dick Tracy series of comics for many years. There's a 24-foot tall mural of Dick Tracy just around the corner off Main Street.

Pawnee claims to have been the "first" for a lot of things. They claim to have the first Piggly Wiggly store in the US, the first Chevrolet and first Ford dealerships in Oklahoma, the first place where an airplane landed and the first telephone in the territory. But I do have to wonder, if they had the first telephone, who did they talk to and did the phone have a hold button?

There is some sort of celebration just about every month of the year in Pawnee with such things as a gathering of steam farm equipment, a fast draw contest and the Oklahoma Boot Throw Championship where contestants are scored for both distance and accuracy with additional points for style. They have an Indian PowWow, a music festival and one of the wildest rodeos in the state. We were there in between the various events but either in recognition of our being in town or the fact that it was Thursday, all the stores along main street were open until 8:00PM instead of their usual closing time of 6:00.

Those not too eager to get an early start stayed around until the Pawnee Bill Museum opened. It's an impressive display of guns, saddles, stuffed horses and photos of the Wild West show's many appearances in both the US and Europe. Its hokey but well worth the time to stop by.

At about the midpoint between Pawnee and Stillwater is the tiny town of Glencoe which never was much but has gone down hill since Highway 412 was turned into a turnpike with no exit there. The train runs through the edge of town but doesn't stop. In fact, there never was a depot there. The entire main street is only one block long with only two businesses; Ruby's (owned by a guy named George) Flea Market and Gene's Cafe. A walk through Ruby's will excite you with things like squirrel traps, chipped china plates and old B&W TVs. But the thing that will really tempt your taste buds are the cinnamon rolls at Gene's. They are Glencoe's answer to Krispy Kreme. The cyclists descended on the pans of hot buns like a swarm of locusts, eating all they could and carrying the rest away with them.

We rolled into the laid back college town of Stillwater, which is also the home of Eskimo Joe's Restaurant with the second most popular T-shirt in the world, selling in numbers only slightly behind those of The Hard Rock Cafe. Eskimo Joe's claims to fame are the cartoon Eskimo and his dog with big toothy grins and artery-clogging cheese fries. To the uninitiated, cheese fries are french fries with a glob of chili con queso poured over them.

When the owner of Eskimo Joe's wanted to expand from the limited fare of hamburgers, hot dogs and cheese fries, he opened Mexico Joe's with the logo of the guy under a huge hat and his donkey, both with those silly, toothy grins. His latest gastronomic expansion is called Joseppi's where Italian is the featured food.

We retired to the hotel where they not only have an indoor pool but also a hot tub.