Day 166 Oklahoma - Wichita Kansas
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
177
205
Trip End
Nov 22, 2008
Wichita,
Kansas,
United States
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Time to check out Oklahoma City before setting sail north to Wichita.
Being a Sunday, the drive into the city was calm with not a lot of traffic, (this is something we have noted along our journey, Most of the city centres are very quiet on Sundays)
The point of interest we targeted was the memorial site for the Oklahoma Terrorist bomb victims.
No problem parking and taking up two parking meters, with nothing to pay being a Sunday, bonus time for the travellers!
We walked the short distance to the memorial, built on the same site as the tragedy happened.
This claimed the lives of 168 people, including 19 children, the area is set, with a reflecting pool down the centre with memorials in the shape of a chair representing each victim of the tragedy, smaller sized chairs for the children killed, in comparison to the adults.
The Chairs are set out on a beautifully manicured lawn in rows, on the site of the building that was destroyed by the bomb, and also set in nine rows, representing the nine floors and the floor each victim was located at the time of the bombing.
A large area has been set aside for this memorial, because the blast also made surrounding buildings unsafe for use, these were dismantled. The wall of the Museum (closed while we were there) shows scars and also bent fire escapes, this building housed the Records building, at the time of the bombing, now houses the memorial museum. It is about 100 yards from the bombed building, yet received massive damage and required a lot of repair work.
In front of the museum is a wall of children's tiles, these were sent in by children from around the world as a hand in friendship to assist the people of Oklahoma to understand they were not alone and not the only ones affected by this act.
From this tribute, we walked around a couple of blocks of the business district, and not even a Starbucks open, (an open Subway but we all know our likeness for that Franchise chain)
We piled back into the Castle and made ourselves a cuppa and set sail north, (Karon showing concern that it would be colder and maybe heading into snow country)
Wichita being the destination, the Cattle country destination for the large cattle drives along the well known Cattle trails, such as the Chisholm trail.
No challenges along the route and before we crossed the border we stopped for lunch at a truck stop, around 20 miles short of the border.
Lunch done and a reset Mandy to take us around the toll way the Kansas State wanted for us to travel into the city, and away we went. The countryside was flat and showed signs of recent flooding, the paddocks were large with newly sown wheat predominant. Cattle and horse farms also showed up along the way.
Another feature were the oil pumps that appear in the middle of the paddocks or alongside the road like ancient prehistoric monsters, slowly bobby up and down, as it lifts the oil from down under up for us to change and convert to miles along a journey in the Castle. ( a note here the price of gas has dropped from a high of $4+ per gal [$1per litre] down to our purchase today at $2.39/gal. [.60litre])
This coupled with the "off Peak" RV park rates, we are finding the $ going a little further. Yes we still save the tollway charges if possible, simply because we can, as well as the fact the scenery is usually better along the secondary roads.
We arrived in Wichita and wound our way towards the museums along the river (Arkansas) to the cow town museum, this being a replica western town with a shoot out of cowboys each day. We were discouraged for entering by the young bloke, he suggested to come back tomorrow because they closed in 45mins and we wouldn't have time to take it all in.
So leaving there to find the information centre, this in itself became a challenge, but undeterred we managed to find the named centre to find it closed and a NO trespassing sign.
By this stage it was time to find a place to park the Castle overnight, so we set our sights for an RV park in Mandy and here we are.
Comments
Hello
Richard said (about being in Kansas). 'no wind could be bigger than the one that comes out of Ricks mouth'.
I say 'don't run over Toto'.
Mitch says (and counted) 32 days until Nan gets home.