May 01, 2008
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Southeastern Kansas is a bit hilly and so is southern Missouri. I'm finding that once I get off the plains the state roads get a bit slower and more fatiguing to drive, especially with the winds out here the past couple of days.
With the rising gas prices, I've been a bit concerned LD's gas mileage might suffer on the Interstate but that doesn't seem to be the case. At my usual 65 mph I find I'm running just a tad over 9 mpg pretty consistently.
Night camp:
Wal-Mart parking lot, Sullivan, Missouri
Sweet, Rich Hickory Milk
Hickory was another favorite. Rambling through the Southeast in the 1770s, the naturalist William Bartram observed Creek families storing a hundred bushels of hickory nuts at a time. "They pound them to pieces, and then cast them into boiling water, which, after passing through fine strainers, preserves the most oily part of the liquid" to make a thick milk, "as sweet as fresh cream, an ingredient in most of their cookery, especially hominy and corncakes." Years ago a friend and I were served hickory milk in rural Georgia by an eccentric backwoods artist named St. EOM who claimed Creek descent. Despite the unsanitary presentation, the milk was ambrosial - fragrantly nutty, delightfully heavy on the tongue, unlike anything I had encountered before.