Day Two - Sunday, May 3, 2009

The sun disappeared behind clouds and rain fell on us most of the day sometimes hard and sometimes light and we were spending most of the morning in Missouri. Actually the rolling terrain was green and lush for the season and the dogwoods spotted the woods once again. We traveled though the Lake of the Ozarks area which is wonderful for families with children to entertain, and for boaters and water aficionados, and for gamblers, and for shoppers, and for eaters ... for just about everyone including roadway construction company owners and workers. It appears that the shovels indeed are ready and already underway in the Lake of the Ozarks area!

One of the most amazing features of many parts of the United States outside of Ohio (!) is the red earth. I love the red dirt and the red rocks. We saw them so many places on our western trip in 2007 and now they are appearing once again in Missouri. It is so strange to see white trucks with red dirt! Funny and fun! Otherwise the Missouri landscape is much like other areas in the Midwest with farms and lakes and rivers and flat land and some rolling hills and woods and small towns. It's a familiar sight.

By now we are entertaining each other with reading about the state and the area through which we are driving in the AAA tourism books. If you aren't a member of AAA and you drive a car, join AAA. If you ever want to take a road trip, it is the best resource. We really enjoy learning about the communities through which we are driving and frequently find some little gems that add to our adventure.

In Missouri we also began to get a couple of themes for the trip. One is the Civil War. Eastern Northerner that I am, and border stater that Harold is, neither of us had much appreciation or knowledge of the Civil War west of the Mississippi River. Of course, those of you who are better historians than we are will remember that the Missouri Compromise allowed Missouri to retain its slave state status but prohibited slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Territory. From this point on, we started paying attention to the information and road signs about the Civil War battles west of the Big Muddy.

The second theme which we discovered is Route 66 - "The Mother Road" or "America's Main Street." Again, the great National Road has always held my attention because it runs through Columbus and through Preble County where we now live less than two miles from our home. But a lot of attention along much of our route on this trip is given to Route 66. Route 66 starts in Chicago and goes to Los Angeles. Not every mile is drivable - or even visible any more - but the folklore that surrounds the road lives on.

By now we also are needing additional entertainment on the road, so we have turned to a book that Jennifer gave me as a gift. It is "State by State - A Panoramic Portrait of America" edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey. It is a totally different approach from the AAA guidebooks. It is a book of articles by fifty different authors describing whatever they want to describe about their assigned state. So far we have read about Missouri (about the Bosnian community in St. Louis), Oklahoma (about Tulsa and why it's a good place to live), Texas (about how everything is big in Texas), and New Mexico (about how an African American gay man with a French boyfriend returned from Paris to visit family and Carlsbad Caverns). So obviously it is an interesting set of stories! As much as we are enjoying the individual stories, we also appreciate the history we learned about the WPA authors project which resulted in 48 comprehensive studies of the states. Here's our next reading project! :)

Our second source of entertainment as we drive along is Patricia Schultz's "1,000 Places to See Before You Die - A Traveler's Life List." We've been tracking our progress through this list for several years now, and believe me, we still have a long way to go. We have, however, visited over 10% of the list and hope to increase that percentage on this trip. It's very interesting to realize that Indiana's only entry is The Great Amish Country Auction in Shishewana. It's not on our route so we'll have to plan a special roadtrip one of these days! In Illinois there are several entries but I've only been to one (The Art Institute of Chicago) and Harold has been to none. OOPS - Harold just reviewed this posting and informed me that he has been to the AIC many times - harkening back to the summer between his junior and senior years of high school when he spent the summer in Chicago working as an office boy at Continental Casualty Life Insurance. I guess we'll need to update the 1,000 Places list! It sounds as though another trip to Chicago should be on our list, too! In Missouri the only entry is Arthur Bryant's Barbeque in Kansas City. Harold says we've been there but I have no memory of it. I believe him, though, and I'll keep writing this blog so I'll remember ...

And that brings us to Oklahoma. Oklahoma is a wide state. We are headed to Tulsa to enjoy the Art Deco buildings and other things we discover along the way. It's a long drive but the speed limits are 70+ most places. It takes awhile to get used to driving that fast. Harold helps with his theory that anything over 80 mph is not driving, it's "aiming" so I generally try to stay below 80 mph. Despite the advantage of covering so much territory at such high speeds, the disadvantage is that even our dear Toyota Camry Hybrid loses some of its miles per gallon advantage. Even so, the average remains about 36 mpg and it's hard to complain!

Our first stop in Tulsa is at the University of Tulsa. Visiting universities is another tourism interest that we have. It's always interesting to me to see how campuses are organized and how the architecture presents the school's story visually. U of T does it very well. The buildings are sandstone, well constructed, have ample green space, and are welcoming to visitors. Hopefully the academic side of things is good, too.

Our tour of the Art Deco buildings in downtown Tulsa led to the discovery of extraordinary examples of period architecture, mostly well-preserved, and always surprising and interesting. The 1924 Public Market was our first stop and that was followed by a driving tour of the area's 30+ examples. The most extraordinary was the Methodist Church with spiraling towers, Art Deco figures, exotic light fixtures, and more. It truly is beautiful.

Our final Tulsa stop was another "university" - Oral Roberts University. What I really wanted to see was the 200-foot glass and steel prayer tower. What we saw was a campus out of the Jetson's! It was totally amazing! The prayer tower reminded us of the Seattle Needle and the buildings which apparently were designed to soar to the heavens looked retro - and not in positive way. All in all it was a totally unsatisfactory experience!

Fortunately the quick lunch at Qdoba gave us a chance to shake away the ORU experience and got us on the road to Oklahoma City. The route was scattered with orange wildflowers along the road and scrub oaks in the more arid but still flat land beyond the flowers. The red earth continued and we read about the Red Earth Pow Wow held annually in the area for the 39 tribal nations that live in Oklahoma. Along the road signs said "Keep our land ... grand." I like that sentiment - that encouragement - a lot.

In Oklahoma City we followed our routine of checking into the hotel and then getting right back out into the city. Oklahoma City (aka OKC) is Oklahoma's state capital so we made our first stop to visit the capital. The building is another grandly sized building fashioned after the US capitol building. We took our usual walk around the grounds and got directions to our next stop from a friendly couple of joggers.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial and the Memorial Museum commemorate the victims and survivors of the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. The Memorial is as remarkable as the pictures we have seen. The effect of the chairs which represent the 168 victims is stunning. The chairs are arranged by nine rows for the nine stories of the Murrah building and each row has the number of chairs of victims, including small chairs for the children who died in the day care center. The plot of chairs is the same as the blueprint of the destroyed building. Along one wall is a list of the survivors from the Murrah Building and from the buildings affected in the vicinity. I remember that I was working at the Ohio Student Aid Commission at the time of the bombing and that we called the Oklahoma agency to find out how everyone was. No one was killed or injured but the building was one of those that was damaged.

The Memorial site is calm and peaceful just as the families of the victims and the survivors themselves wanted it to be. The reflecting pool provides the quieting influence of water. The one surviving tree provides a locus for showing appreciation for the rescue teams that saved so many people and helped the families of all the people involved in the bombing. We walked around the area and tried to imagine for ourselves the terror of the experience for those who were there.

And then of course we moved on ... Most of the area near the Memorial site is older buildings. Elsewhere the city experienced a renaissance when city leaders engaged architect and developer I. M. Pei to design the city of the future. As a result, OKC has a large section of modern buildings, underground tunnels and above ground enclosed walkways, and an extraordinary public park and conservatory - all of which feature glass and steel and modern architecture.

Not far from this area, however, is the Mexican community. Needless to say our drive through this area did not reflect the I. M. Pei effect! It did, however, test our memories of the Spanish language we each had studied at various points in our academic careers and our joint study of Spanish when I was working with Reading Recovery and trying to restore my Spanish in order to communicate more effectively with the teachers and teacher leaders who were engaged in Descubriendo La Lectura. Anyway, we still have a long way to go to be anywhere near fluent!

Our drive through the Mexican community led us to the only location listed in the 1,000 Places list - the Cattleman's Steakhouse in the heart of the stockyards district. Somehow I thought the restaurant's inclusion in the list would make it pretty upscale and of course I had been worrying about whether my travel clothes would be adequate. OK, I should stop worrying about such things because no one that I care about really cares! Besides, it's OKC and my only concern should have been my lack of cowboy hat and boots! Anyway, the important thing was that the Steakhouse had Woodford Reserve bourbon, the official bourbon of yesterday's Kentucky Derby (was that really only yesterday?) and we celebrated our time in Oklahoma with a toast of bourbon. After all, arriving in Oklahoma meant that we each have been to all fifty states! What fortunate people we are. And of course the conversation now turns to where we want to go next! We'll let you know when we decide! By the way, the steaks were great!