3. OKLAHOMA

OKLAHOMA CITY (March 24th to 26th)

We checked out and said goodbye to what really was a fab hotel in Dallas and headed off to Oklahoma City

On route we stopped at MacDonalds for a coffee (well you have to travel in style) and landed at the Holiday Inn Express in Bricktown, Oklahoma City, late afternoon.

After checking in we headed out into Bricktown and were pleasantly surprised by a hub of restaurants and bars all built around a lovely canal looking glorious in the 30 degree sunshine. After a walk round and a few pics we settled into the Bourbon St restaurant for an evening dinner.

Our waiter was a little odd and he managed to drop Ian’s steak on the floor while serving. To top that, all the food was cold so we called the Manager and had it all remade. When it eventually returned it was very nice, apart from Den’s which had obviously been seasoned in a salt mill……twice.

On the Wednesday after breakfast we set off for the National Heritage and Cowboy museum. This place was incredible and absolutely enormous, over 18 acres. It explains the history and culture of the American West through an extensive array of art, and artefact collections, including movie memorabilia. There was even a 360 iMax cinema room which was a great experience by itself. They had even built a replica town, complete with a cobbled road, saloon, church, blacksmiths, school and much more – unbelievable!!

There were a few interactive experiences including an AI photo machine that dressed you up as a cowboy and cowgirl and also stuck you on Route 66 (hilarious) – look at the pictures below. We thought we’d be in the museum for a couple of hours but ended up easily doubling that.

After a chill and swim in the indoor pool back at the hotel we headed out for what was to be great night

Den had arranged to meet her pen pal of 24 years, Lisa and her hubby Chris for dinner and we all went along to this fantastic ‘boujee’ steakhouse they had booked. Den and Lisa had never actually met, so you can imagine how surprised Lisa was when she saw Den and realised she wasn’t actually a 6 foot platinum blonde with long legs as Den had often portrayed herself over the years, but was in fact a ‘doll’!! Lisa’s husband Chris was a funny geezer and gave us plenty of laughs with his USA views on the current world order. The food was amazing and was definitely the best steak so far on the trip.

After spending around an hour saying our goodbyes with lots of hugs……..Ian drove home in the dark which became very tricky when there was a city wide power cut that plunged everything into pitch black darkness (well it seemed like that the way he was driving).

The next morning we took a short boat cruise around the Bricktown canal which was very relaxing and informative about the history of Oklahoma. Rob our guide (a desert storm veteran) took a liking to our accents and the fact we were from the UK. He was sports mad so that made it easy to have a chat and a bit of fun with him as we went round the canal.

In the afternoon we had an emotional visit to the Oklahoma bomb memorial museum.

On April 19, 1995, a nutcase called Timothy McVeigh detonated a 5 tonne bomb in a van outside the federal building in Oklahoma City, destroying half the building and killing 168 people, including 19 children and injuring 684 others.

If you can’t quite remember the event, please have a google about it.

The city have built a magnificent memorial and museum at the site of the old building dedicated to all those who lost their lives and were injured and also all the heroes who were involved in the search, rescue and recovery.

It was a very moving experience as there was lots of news & video footage, loads of artefacts and also tape recordings from the victims families as the museum walked you through the events of the day and the aftermath. There were multiple terminals where you could look at timelines and delve into the history of all the victims. It was obviously all very sensitively done. The level of detail on display was incredible, for example they had the receipts for the hire truck McVeigh used to hide the bomb and for all the bomb materials he bought and even a receipt for the Chinese takeaway he ate in a motel room the night before the bombing. These FBI guys and girls are good!!

McVeigh and his main accomplice were apprehended not long after the bomb exploded (they traced his van from the fragments in the rubble) and McVeigh was found guilty of murder and was eventually executed in 2001 by lethal injection.

Outside the museum there was a large water feature ‘footprint’ of the original building with memorial chairs strategically placed to match the floor and the location of the area the victims worked.

After the visit we went back to hotel where Ang & Den got through some more washing and we got ready for the evening where we had a very nice Mexican including Fajitas etc – lovely jubbly.

TULSA, VIA ROUTE 66 (March 27th – 28th)

We checked out of the hotel the next morning and headed off to Tulsa via the iconic and very scenic Route 66. We picked the road up just North of the city and pretty much stayed on it for around 3 hours all the way to Tulsa (not quite 24 hours) with Keith mostly at the wheel. The temperature had dropped significantly overnight from 30 degrees the previous day to about 15 degrees and it was a bit nippy.

We stopped half way at a town called Chandler for a coffee in a small diner called the Boom-a-rang. It was exactly like the movies with people sitting at the counter and the waitress going round chatting and refilling everyone’s coffee.

Route 66 was full of neon signs, small towns, quirky attractions, old historical buildings and motels that were all fun to see, so we definitely got our kicks on route 66.

We reached Tulsa around mid afternoon and checked into our hotel at the Holiday Inn Express Tulsa Mid Town.

In the evening we went to a very lively and busy cowboy themed restaurant near the hotel and had a fantastic steak dinner. Ang & Den treated themselves to a nice piece of cheescake for desert (well, they shared one between themselves).

We headed out the next morning and first stop was the visitor centre and at 10am it wasn’t open as we were an hour early! A visitor centre that opened at 11am on a weekend? This was to become a bit of a theme as we began to realise that Tulsa was a very sleepy and laid back town, for a Saturday anyway. We found a Farmers Market nearby to kill some time which was basically a collection of small stalls.

We headed back to the visitor centre where we were greeted by a chatty and nice woman who looked like she had just got out of the shower.

She loved to chat, but at 100mph, and proceeded to tell us all about Tulsa, taking us back a few billion years to when the earth actually formed. She particularly engaged with Ang as the rest of us dived for cover avoiding eye contact and pretending to look at various tourist leaflets and maps dotted around the shop. She did give us some good information to be fair and told us that the city might be a little bit quiet after spring break and she wasn’t kidding.

After an hour of listening and watching Ang get more and more frustrated, we headed out onto the nearby road which was actually Route 66 that runs through the centre of Tulsa. We walked a few miles down towards the city passing some iconic sights including a collection of amazing tall statues aptly named the ‘Land of the Giants’, so we managed to get a few more kicks on Route 66.

Our next stop was a venue called the ‘Centre of the Universe’ – what could that be you ask?

Before we get to that, the lady at the visitor centre told us it was closed for a refurb and boarded up. However, we don’t give up that easily and decided to go and have a look anyway.

The Centre of the Universe is a unique acoustic/ sound anomaly whereby if you stand on a certain point in a circle marked on the concrete floor and make a noise you can hear an echo yourself, but everybody else outside the circle cannot, crazy stuff.

It was boarded up just as we had been told, however it was not exactly Fort Knox and it was easy for us Ninjas to slip Inside.

Once inside we saw a few other people and we proceeded to each test the theory of the sound anomaly. Sure enough, it worked a treat and Den accurately described it as ‘talking to herself in her own head but that her words didn’t seem to make any sense’. We said that’s what we felt like when talking to her everyday (ha, ha).

After having a bit of fun we decided it was time for our usual coffee break. We found a small place called the ‘shuffleboard cafe’, this was after Ian had given us a walking tour of Tulsa only to end up back where we started, he said we needed the ‘steps’ after all the food. The Shuffleboard was a cafe where you played various board games etc – and they had a lot of games.

Not wishing to pay the 7$ per person for a game we’d never heard of, we just had a coffee and played our ‘bring your own’ card game!

After the coffee we had a quick look at the FC Tulsa soccer stadium just up the road. They were playing at 7pm and given it was about 2pm we looked like a group of away fans outside the ground who had arrived early to find a good parking space and beat the traffic.

Speaking of traffic and parking, we didn’t need to worry. Tulsa has to have the most parking space per person of any city in the world. There is so much and it’s everywhere. Even when you thought they had enough space they decided to build upwards with a zillion multi story car parks as well.

What’s more surprising is they were all empty, just like the city centre, nobody there. Den renamed Gene Pitney’s famous song to “24 people in Tulsa”. It was like something from a movie.

After visiting the Centre of the Universe we all felt a bit lethargic (well you would be, wouldn’t you) and we decided to visit a supermarket to stock up on a few supplies and head back to the hotel for a few hours chilling before going out for dinner.

On route to the supermarket we went through a rather affluent part of Tulsa, called Brookside, with enormous houses and tree lined streets and thankfully we saw a few more people.

We headed out to the Red Lobster restaurant for dinner and enjoyed lobster, salmon and shrimp.

The next morning we checked out after a solid breakfast, then looked at a few restaurants in New Orleans to book for Easter (planning ahead), before setting off for the State of Kansas and Dodge City.