Sunday 9/19 - O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A !

Reporting on Oklahoma today - warm (a little more humid than we've been used to) and once again the sun shone and there were bright blue skies. We sure have been lucky with our weather.

We drove from Shamrock Texas (through Erick, OK) to Oklahoma City. We went to the Oklahoma City Memorial and Museum, located in the area of the Federal building that was bombed in April of 1995. They have a long reflecting pool flanked by two walls, each of them with 9:01 or 9:03 engraved on the top - the minute before and the minute after the blast. Along the one side of the pool there are bronze and glass chairs, each with the name of one of the 168 victims. Some chairs are smaller to represent the 19 children (in the Daycare) that were killed.

Next door in a building that suffered some damage (and they have left those cosmetic scars)the museum is located on three floors. The first thing that they do is put you in a room that suggests a courtroom where the proceedings were being recorded and the sound of the blast can be heard. Then doors open and immediately you are bombarded (excuse the pun)with the media coverage on several screens. You then follow the time line with pictures on the walls, monitors playing news coverage and interviews with survivors (or family members), display boxes of watches, shoes or coffee mugs, eyeglasses - all of which have some perfect and others damaged. One room displays photographs of each victim and with some of them something personal to perhaps reflect the personality of the individual. I could hardly stay in the room. And the children's items - it was heart wrenching. They take you throught the trials of the bombers and finally to the planning of the memorial.

After that we felt we needed a little something different, so we went to the Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame, also in Oklahoma City. A huge building with gallery upon gallery of cowboy items - shoes, chaps, hats, guns, saddles - rooms of western art, a whole town (sort of Disney-like) complete with voices that must be on sensors (go into the bank and you'll get robbed). One whole area is devoted to cowboys of the big (and small) screen. From the earliest Tom Mix,etc. all the way through our favorites - mine - Jimmy Stewart, and Big Tom's - Glenn Ford - up to the stars of Lonesome Dove and finally Tom Selleck and Sam Elliot. Horses, sidekicks and eye patches were all covered.(pun)
That was all very interesting.

We then drove on through Oklahoma, which began to get greener and hillier (a word?), and into Arkansas, where we are now in a Super 8 ( actually Van Buren, AR).

Another suite - A large room with a qu bed, a couch and TV armoire and a bar sink, and then an adjoining room with another qu bed, a desk, a frig, microwave and console (for our suitcases). All this and a bathroom too! We have a light with no knobby for turning (you-know-who is irritated by that and has already reported it to a "new girl". We don't look for it to be repaired or replaced in our lifetime - oops - stay.) We also have a floor lamp that requires one to stand and hold the "pusher" in to keep it lit . A person down's get much done that way. That one is attached to the ceiling light anyway and we all know how I feel about ceiling lights.

We ate at Braum's - a little ice cream chain that seems to be popular in this section of the country. Hamburgers and shakes. Nothing fancy. It seemed to be the hang out place for Sunday night church goers - not many eating and a whole lot of chatting goin'on.

Tomorrow we're hoping for an earlier start than today to head toward Memphis. Bye Bye