Our final day in Albuquerque was Wednesday 10/15, and we really didn’t do much – restocked at the grocery store and made a trip to Planet Fitness. Thursday morning, we headed East to the town of Tucumcari, New Mexico. It’s one of the many towns that thrived in the heyday of Route 66 and still has some of that retro charm. We drove through the town and loved seeing all the old neon signs that are still there and such great relics of Route 66. Apparently, they still light the signs every night – we didn’t go back after dark, but I bet it’s pretty neat to see!

Our campground in Tucumcari had a cattle guard at the entrance – that’s a first for us; we’ve never stayed in a place where the cattle roam so freely that the campground needs to keep them out! We stayed there just one night, and headed out Friday morning to continue East to Amarillo, TX. We’re basically following Route 66 at this point, so we’ll be stopping in several of the key towns on the Mother Road.

Saturday morning, we went to check out one of the most famous roadside attractions in the area, Cadillac Ranch. Back in the early ‘70s, an art group half-buried ten Cadillacs in the ground and left it to be an interactive art display, with visitors spray painting the cars. It wasn’t quite as colorful as we had expected because the cars were all recently sprayed red, and haven’t been fully covered over again. We didn’t bring any spray paint so we didn’t leave our mark, but others were there having fun with it!

From there, we went to the ‘copycat’ Slug Bug Ranch where VW Beetles and several limos are half-buried, and we honestly liked this much better – it was so much more colorful and graffiti-laden!

In the afternoon, we took a drive South to Palo Duro Canyon State Park. It’s home to the 2^nd largest canyon in the country – only the Grand Canyon beats it! It measures 120 miles long, 20 miles wide, and 800 feet deep, so it’s a REALLY big hole! We took the 16-mile scenic drive through the park and stopped a bunch of times to enjoy the scenery and variety of colors in the rocks. The CCC did much of the work to construct the park’s trails and buildings in the 1930s. It’s a beautiful park and was definitely worth seeing!

We had yummy Texas BBQ for dinner – we had to use the “sissy” sauce because the regular sauce was a bit too spicy for us!

On Sunday, we took a drive around Amarillo, down the old Route 66 and through downtown. Here’s a glimpse of what we saw…

It was time to continue our journey Eastward on Monday, but the wind had other plans. There was a wind advisory in most of Oklahoma from 9am to 1pm, so we decided to delay our departure from Amarillo so that we’d be arriving in OK after 1pm to miss the worst of it. So we waited at the campground until checkout time (11am), and then headed to the nearby Buc-ee’s to kill some time and eat our lunch. We hit the road around noon, and while it was definitely a little windy, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it likely would have been earlier! We crossed into the final “new” state of this trip, Oklahoma…we thought we’d be there SOONER than we were, but it all worked out (did you get that “sooner” joke? The Oklahoma Sooners? Ha ha!). Anyway, it’s our 46^th state together, and my 47^th state…just three more to go!

Our initial impression of Oklahoma was that it’s greener and more hilly than expected, kind of like Kansas. We also noticed that the soil is very red – apparently, it’s Port Silt Loam, not clay! We arrived at our campground near El Reno, OK around 4pm.

On Tuesday, we headed East into Oklahoma City (OKC), to the OKC National Memorial and Museum which remembers the horrific act of domestic terrorism that occurred at the Federal Building on April 19, 1995…hard to believe it was 30 years ago, I remember it very clearly. The outdoor memorial is so beautifully done – every component is symbolic and pays a wonderful tribute to the 168 people who died that day. The memorial is flanked by “The Gates of Time”, one marked “9:01” and the other “9:03”. The bomb went off at 9:02am. The gates represent the innocence before the attack and the moment when healing began. There is a field of empty chairs, one for each victim. The 19 chairs for the children who died are smaller. The chairs light up at night. The memorial sits on the land once occupied by the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building; some of the walls are still there.

The indoor museum is arranged chronologically, from the start of the day which was like any other, through the blast, rescue & recovery, and the investigation. There is a recording of a meeting that was taking place, and as you sit, listening to the ordinary proceedings, suddenly you hear the blast. You listen to the family members tell their stories as they tried to find their children and their loved ones. You hear from survivors and the guilt they deal with every day. There are countless artifacts. The museum is housed in the Journal Record Building which was damaged but not destroyed by the blast. The Gallery of Honor remembers the victims and is especially emotional when you see the faces of the babies who died in the building’s daycare. Overall, the memorial and museum do such an incredible job of remembering that day and ensuring everyone who visits knows the impact of violence.

We took a short drive through a few neighborhoods of OKC, including Automobile Alley which was once full of car dealerships and still has some of the original signage. We saw some of the historic Heritage Hills neighborhood, full of beautiful mansions in a variety of architectural styles.

We headed back to the campground and I captured a few interesting photos on an afternoon walk.

Wednesday morning, our first stop was the OKC Museum of Art which holds one of the largest collections of Chihuly glass in the world…so of course, I had to check it out. I was so impressed! We’ve seen a lot of his glass in many different locations around the country, so I figured this would be more of the same, but they had some really unique pieces that we haven’t seen before, as well as several of his paintings. Beautiful exhibit made even more impressive by the wonderful lighting. The museum had an impressive gift shop, too, with some Chihuly pieces for sale. Sadly, I did not buy any.

From there, we headed to Scissortail Park. The scissor-tailed flycatcher is the state bird of Oklahoma, and the Skydance pedestrian bridge was influenced by the bird; it’s pretty cool looking, and they light it at night! The city’s union station is also located there – it’s not open to the public but is used as an event space. The building has a wonderful Spanish-style complete with clay roof tiles.

Our next stop was a bit odd, but given the fantastic online reviews, we decided to check it out – the Museum of Osteology, America’s only skeleton museum! It was fascinating! There were over 400 skeletons from every imaginable species, from hummingbirds to a 40-foot whale. The museum staff has posed the skeletons so well, and provided lots of interesting tidbits about the skeletons. We even got to see the flesh-eating beetles that clean the bones. All of the animals are donated from zoos and aquariums, so it’s all very ethical. So glad we went – thoroughly enjoyed it!

Thursday was a pretty quiet day; we took a little drive down Route 66 near our campground and into El Reno, OK. El Reno is known as the “Crossroads of America” because Route 66 and the Chisholm Trail intersected there. The Chisholm Trail was an important North-South cattle route between Texas and Kansas. They have a wonderfully restored filling station that serves as the visitor center, and lots of interesting signage and Route 66 photo ops!

Just before 1am on Friday morning, we were awakened by a weather alert on my phone that high winds were imminent (over 65mph), so we decided we would be safer in the truck since it’s heavier than the trailer. Fortunately, it didn’t seem like the winds ever got that crazy. We did get an alert for hail while we were in the truck, but that didn’t come either. After about 45 minutes, we were back in bed. And, of course, after that interrupted sleep came a day of driving in the rain…non-stop, heavy rain all the way to Claremore, OK which is Northeast of Tulsa. Mark was a real trooper and drove the entire way.

We are slowly making our way back to Chicago…just 645 more miles and a couple more stops over the next 10 days. Hopefully it will stop raining!