Checotah to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma – 12 March 2024
On Tuesday we arrived in Oklahoma City which is the capital of Oklahoma. Oklahoma City has the third largest land area in the US and has a population of about 600,000 people. Oklahoma City is where the Wild West is still very much alive and well. They have the world’s largest cattle auction, Cattlemen’s steakhouse, many cattle and horse ranches, they hold many horse shows and reining competitions, and also International Rodeos. There is even Club Rodeo, a new Western bar and dance hall where all wanna-be cowboys and cowgirls can get into the arena with real bulls. Best of all it is home to the amazing National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum which we visited the following day.
This museum was enormous. It had a very impressive collection of classic and contemporary Western art, an entire turn of the century town, and several movie theatres and interactive history galleries that cover the American cowboy, Rodeos, Native American culture, Victorian firearms, frontier military and Western performers. As you enter the Museum you look straight at an awe inspiring sculpture entitled “At the End of the Trail” . The sculpture depicts a Native American and his horse weary in body and spirit at the end of their journey. The Artist James Earle Fraser originally created this image much smaller in bronze. He created this larger sculpture in 1915 which is over 18 ft tall and weighs thousands of pounds.
We loved the Cowboy sections especially the one devoted to Rodeos. Each type of Rodeo event had a corresponding movie showing competitors and there were also many displays of riding gear, outfits and trophies. One of the beautiful saddles was from none other than Alberta, Canada!
We were in OKC for 6 nights and made use of the time to get an oil change. Across the road from the RV Park there were multiple walking trails so we had a place to take Jax for a walk and Derek could also use the trails for running. The RV Park had a small snacky type restaurant with drinks. What we saved on the food we certainly made up for on the drinks which were pricey. As I was in the middle of trying to organize a shipment of Dog Washes, there was a lot of coordination that I was needing to do with the factory, shippers and customers so that was keeping me busy. It was also a very stressful time and I was having real difficulty in sleeping – with most nights only getting about 4 hours in. So I was a little bit of zombie most of the time.
On Thursday, needing to take a break we drove to downtown Oklahoma City. Our first stop was the National Memorial. When driving through this lovely City it’s very hard to imagine the devastation and tragedy that occurred on April 19, 1995. At 9 am, Timothy McVeigh detonated a rental truck filled with explosives parked in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The resulting explosion killed 168 people and destroyed the entire north face of the building. Visiting the site of the tragedy I found to be a deeply moving experience.
The City has turned the site into a National Memorial to honour the victims, survivors, rescuers, and all who were affected by the bombing.
It contains several elements – a Memorial museum – which holds all the artifacts related to the bombing; The field of 168 empty chairs which faces a reflecting pool each with a name etched in the glass base of each; A protected American Elm which survived the bombing still stands and is called the Survivor tree. The wall around the tree “The spirit of this city and this nation will not be defeated; our deeply rooted faith sustains us”; the Gates of Time at the entrances to the park – are monumental twin bronze gates which mark the time of the moment of destruction, the last moments of peace, and first moments of recovery. Both gates bear the inscription: We come here to remember those who were killed, those who survived and those changed forever. May all who leave here know the impact of violence. May this memorial offer comfort, strength, peace, hope and serenity; Rescuers’ Orchard – a grove of trees are planted on the lawn around the Survivor tree to represent the rescuers who came to the aid of the survivors; Children’s Area – where more than 5,000 hand-painted tiles, from all over the United States and Canada, were made by children and sent to Oklahoma City after the bombing and finally the Survivors’ Wall – the only remaining original portions of the Murrah Building, inscribed with the names of more than 600 survivors.
The “Field of Empty Chairs” was for me the most moving part at the National Memorial. The chairs which are made from glass, bronze and stone, sit on the site where the Murrah Building once stood. They are arranged in 9 rows to symbolize the 9 floors of the building – each person’s chair is on the row (floor) where they worked when the bomb went off. The western column of 5 chairs represents the 5 people who died but were not in the Murrah Building at the time but in other buildings nearby, outside and one rescuer. 19 smaller chairs represent the children killed in the bombing. 3 unborn children died along with their mothers, and they are listed on their mothers’ chairs beneath their mothers’ names.
Travelling through North America has opened our eyes to the many terrorist attacks and other tragedies that have affected millions of people across both our countries, something we do not think about in our daily lives. I am so grateful that I have not experienced this horror in my life and very appreciative of all the good friends and family we hold dear.
After visiting Bricktown in downtown Oklahoma City we took a walk through Myriad Gardens who are preparing for their tulip festival which is happening at the end of March. This festival celebrates the beginning of Spring. Such beautiful colours. They always remind me of my Mother who was born in Amsterdam.
Besides rows of beautiful flowers, Myriad gardens also has an amazing looking Conservatory called the Crystal Bridge, which contains thousands of desert and tropical plants. Flowing beneath the Conservatory is a pond filled with enormous Koi and also many ducks and geese. As we had Jax with us at the time we were unable to go inside the Conservatory but we could certainly appreciate the Architecture, the beautiful gardens and views of the OKC buildings surrounding us. The tall building you see in the video is the 50 story Devon Energy center, the tallest building in OKC.
On the way back to the RV we stopped outside the Tinker Air Force Base, to visit the Charles B. Hall Airpark, named in honor of Major Blakesly Hall, a Tuskegee Airman and highly decorated pilot. The Tinker AFB is one of the largest and most important military installations in the US. It sits on 5000 acres, has 2 x 1000 ft runways and 22,000 military personnel and civilian employees. Since the base opened March 1 1942, it has produced 5,345 C-47 cargo planes (the work horse of the airforce during WWII and beyond) and manufactured 5,300 C-47, 400 C-54 and 900 A-26 aircraft. The maintenance unit modified and maintained B-17, B-24 and B-29 bombers (over 38,000 R335 engine overhauls ), C-47 and C-54 cargo planes.
In 1968 during the Vietnam war, Tinker employed 24,778 civilian and 4,404 military employees to repair and maintain F-4, F-105 and A-7 aircraft. By the 1980’s Tinker managed B-1 Lancer and B-2 spirit bombers and maintained engines on the F-101, F-107, F-108 and F-110.
During WWII, over 50% of skilled employees building the B-29 were women and they are memorialized as “Rosie the Riveter.” There is also a Prisoner of War Memorial and a Medal of Honor Memorial.
The park has many iconic US aircraft on display such as the Rockwell B-1B Lancer, B-29 Superfortress, B-52 Stratofortress, F-4D Phantom II, A-7D Corsair, C-47 Skytrain, USAF F-105D Thunderchief, F-4D Phantom II, Boeing RB-47E Stratojet and the C-135 Stratolifter. Glad we took a look, well worth the time.
