Clinton sits in western Oklahoma on the old road that Americans called the Mother Road, and the town has leaned into that fact. The Oklahoma Route 66 Museum is here, laid out decade by decade from the road's birth in 1926 through the Dust Bowl, the migration west that John Steinbeck wrote about, and the postwar boom of motels and neon. For someone about to ride the same alignment, it works as a good briefing before the miles start. The Washita River runs just to the south, and the land around is red soil, wheat, cattle and wind.
The riding on this stretch is a lesson in patience. The old road runs flat and often straight, sometimes beside the interstate and sometimes drifting off into wheat fields, with concrete slabs patched in a dozen eras and the occasional faded sign for a long-gone diner. What you get is space: big skies, long horizons, grain elevators rising from the plain like cathedrals, and in spring the threat of storms that can be seen from fifty kilometres away. Crosswinds are often strong, so brace for them on the open sections, and avoid the tornado-prone afternoons of May if you can.
Clinton has nearly ten thousand people, which means fuel, motels and diners are all easy. Weatherford, a little over twenty kilometres to the east, is another option, and farther west Elk City carries on the Route 66 theme with its own museum. Mornings are cool even in summer, but by midday the heat on the plains can be fierce, so carry water and keep an eye on the gauges between towns. The distances between services are not wild, but the landscape makes them feel longer.
Stop for a burger and a milkshake, because the road demands it. The sort of place that survives on this highway tends to be family-run and unhurried, and the people behind the counter will often ask where you are headed before you have sat down. Westward lie the Texas Panhandle and the New Mexican mesas, and the road keeps changing as it goes.