The Great American Road Trip

Day 5 was mostly a driving day. We drove from Roswell, New Mexico, through the panhandle of Texas (Amarillo), and ended up in OKC. I can safely say that I am looking forward to shorter driving days ahead. We pretty much have our travel routine set. I’m up at 6:00 am, I watch a little news, check on emails and messages, then I take a shower. Start getting the boys up around 6:45. I say “start” because it will take them about 1/2 an hour before they actually get out of bed after my harassing them. They are actually pretty efficient once they are up. They pack up their stuff then leave their bags in the room and go downstairs to eat the motel’s free breakfast. I follow them down soon after. While I finish packing up my stuff, the boys take theirs to the truck and load up. They drain the water (melted ice) from the cooler, and if necessary, refill the cooler with ice from the ice machine. Meanwhile, I come downstairs with the rest of the stuff, and I pack the truck. The boys take out any snacks and drinks they will want while we’re driving, and put them in a small collapsible cooler we keep in the cab of the truck. Like clockwork, we have pulled out and hit the road consistently between 8:00 AM and 8:15. We have the motel breakfast, and then either stop somewhere to make sandwiches for lunch, or we eat out. If we eat out for lunch, then the sandwiches will be our dinner (or vice-versa). That way, we’re keeping the fast food stops to a bare minimum. This has worked so far, but the trip is a long one…

Our only sightseeing stop for today was a doozy. We visited the Oklahoma Bombing Memorial and Museum in downtown Oklahoma City. It was a very sobering place. Outside was a fence which people periodically leave notes and mementos at, much like the Vietnam Wall in D.C. The memorial is also outside. The museum is housed in a re-purposed building which originally was a block away from the Murrah Building.

The museum itself is much larger than I thought it would be. It is two floors of artifacts and survivor testimonies, as well as the manhunt and capture of the perpetrators. It was very detailed and dramatic, starting with you listening to an audio recording of a city planning meeting occurring across the street from the Federal building at the time of the blast. I could only imagine what it was like. The panicked voices on the audio recording were scary to listen to (and they were across the street). Many of the most touching exhibits were the belongings of those who survived, and those who were killed. The pieces of wreckage on display were horrifying.

The second floor (where you started the tour) was mainly the before the blast stuff, followed by the actual bombing. The first floor (where you ended) was mostly dedicated to the capture of McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and co-conspirators Michael and Lori Fortier. It also detailed the trial, the evidence found and used, and ended with McVeigh’s death by lethal injection in June, 2001.

After the museum tour, we headed outside to view the memorial. There is a lot of symbolism in how the memorial was created. There are two monoliths, one on each end of a reflecting pool. On the far side of the pool is a grassy knoll with 168 empty chairs, representing each of the victims. On one monolith is the number 9:01. At the other end of the pool, there is 9:03. This signifies the moment before the blast, and the moment after the blast. The pool is actually the exact location of 5th street, where the Ryder truck was parked. I was told that the idea was that the 9:01 represented the past, and 9:03 represented the future (as in moving on from the past and starting over). It was all very moving and beautiful.

Some final thoughts about today:

• We pulled in to town at 5:00 PM, and the Museum closed at 6:00 PM. The guy at the front desk said they were done selling tickets because it would take too long to go through the entire exhibit, and we wouldn’t be able to finish. I told him I was from Oregon, and we had driven 8 hours (actually more like 7 1/2) just to see this place. He checked with his manager, and she allowed us to go on. Can you imagine? We were going to see it, dammit!

• Update from yesterday’s post: I saw a rabbit (alive), and no joke – a giant tarantula-like spider crossing the road.

• Although we would have liked to have lingered longer, our trip through the Texas panhandle was quick. Our only stops were for gas, and for lunch at a picnic site on the side of the road. There were a lot of these wind turbines though, and that was cool:

Tomorrow, we drive through Arkansas and land in Memphis, Tennessee. It will be the beginning of our Civil Rights Tour of the southern states. It will start with a visit to the Little Rock Central school where black kids were escorted by the National Guard so that they could integrate an all white school. Should be interesting. Memphis will be cool because the Civil Rights Museum is there (at the sight of MLK Jr’s assassination at the Lorraine Motel), and because, as a blues fan, there will be blues history and music there!

Thanks for checking in on our ongoing journey. Hopefully we won’t kill each other on this trip (some cracks are beginning to show!). Peace.