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| CRYSTAL BRIDGE AT MYRIAD GARDENS, OKLAHOMA CITY |
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| MEMORIAL TO OKLAHOMA LAND RUSH |
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| HERE PUSSY, PUSSY |
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| COUNT DOWN TO CROSSING THE ROAD |
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| TORNADO DEVASTATED AREA OF MOORE |
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| DIARAMA AT THE ROUTE 66 MUSEUM |
The terrain becomes flatter as we drive through what remains of Missouri, cross a tiny corner of Kansas and finally enter into Oklahoma State. Our stops along the way include lunch at the Totem Pole Park near Foyil where they boast of having the tallest totem pole in the world, another at Catoosa to see the giant whale model and finally 'Pops' in Arcadia where they sell over 650 different varieties of soda. With an enormous pop bottle outside it's hard to miss. Everything in America seems to be characterised by huge size.
Corn and wheat production appear to give way cattle as we travel west, and the grass seems surprisingly green given that temperatures have now risen to a sweltering 105 degrees F.
We arrive at the Sheraton Hotel in Oklahoma City then go out for supper at the nearby Tapwerks restaurant in Bricktown with its 100 varieties of beer on tap.
Next morning is a free day, so I head off alone to explore the city. I soon arrive at the beautiful Myriad Botanical Gardens, with its impressive Crystal Bridge Tropical Conservatory over a large pond. I noted that the carp in the pond seemed to follow the ducks around.
Later I visited the Oklahoma National Memorial on the site of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building which was destroyed in the 1995 bombing. This remains the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil perpetrated by an American citizen. The area where the building stood is now populated by 168 empty chairs, each inscribed with the name of a victim.
After the above, I found it slightly unnerving when crossing roads. Most US cities seem to have pedestrian crossing signs with computerised voices which count down the remaining time to cross ...6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... I kept imagining that 'BOOM' would come next.
After that I wondered around the Bricktown Canal, with the substantial monument to the 1889 'land rush' which led to the foundation of Oklahoma City and State. I also stopped by the Bass Pro Drive sports shop where I could make faces at the large catfish in the aquarium and review the range of guns for sale.
I was able to survey where I had walked later that evening from the 49th floor of the Devon Tower, tallest building in the City.
After our second night in Oklahoma City we took a detour south from Route 66 to visit Moore, the district of Oklahoma City that was hit by a tornado on May 20 this year. The Moore community are right in tornado alley and this is the 5th tornado to have hit them in 15 years, and not the worst. We saw homes that had lost roofs and many were completely destroyed. The track taken by the tornado was evident, with houses just a few hundred yards either side apparently untouched.
Our intended destination for the day was Amarillo, Texas, but along the way we visited the 'official' Route 66 Museum in Clinton (not named after the former US President), and also Texola, a town which once thrived when Route 66 was the main highway through it, but became a ghost town when the interstate roads were built and Route 66 was finally decommissioned in 1985.
Route 66 was realigned (i.e. re-routed) many times, but from the mid-1950's it went into decline as it was gradually replaced the new interstate highways. Many parts of the original Route 66 are now impassable so we frequently had to use these interstate roads instead.
Shortly after entering Texas we visited the Devil's Rope Museum in McLean, which explained the history of barbed wire. It also had an excellent display about the ecological disaster that occurred in this central region of America in the 1930's known as the dust bowl. The ploughing of fields removed the grass that held the soil together. This, combined with drought conditions led to choking dust storms and the complete collapse in farming. The huge migration of people to the West Coast along Route 66 is described in Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath'.
After checking into our Amarillo hotel for the evening, we were all chauffeured to The Big Texan Steak Ranch to enjoy what was, in my view, one of the best steak meals I have ever eaten.
For those with a huge appetite, they offer a massive 72 oz steak meal which, if you can eat it all in 1 hour, you get it for free. We watched 3 people try and fail.
