BFE Texas

(Posting from the Breakfast Buffet at the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo)

After a good night’s rest at the Whitten Inn, we had breakfast at a regional chain – Jimmy’s Egg; where the food and service was good. It reminded us of another series of restaurants in the Atlanta area – J. Christopher’s.

After that, we headed back to the Oklahoma City Memorial to go through their museum. You start out by learning more about the Murrah Federal Building, its construction, and a little about the person it is named after. Along the wall, there is a timeline of the early morning of April 19, 1995. Just before you go through a set of doors, there is a zoomed-in photo of a security camera picture from a nearby building that shows a Ryder truck going by a couple of minutes before 9am that day.

The room that you next enter depicts the hearing room of the Oklahoma Water Resources Board; which had convened a meeting at 9am and, because it was a public hearing, was being tape recorded. The Water Resources building was directly next to the Murrah Federal Building. You hear the meeting being called to order, someone introducing themselves and what the proceedings are about, and then… It is a powerful message – which carries you throughout the rest of the exhibits; which continue the timeline and also have displays of some of the damage that the blast caused, artifacts from the rubble (some of which specifically identified to a person (and whether they survived or not), and other stories that made up that day.

The museum is housed in one of the building that sustained damage that day… one of the last displays that you see is the damages remains of a men’s bathroom that was specifically taped and then sealed off. Simply put – the museum was very moving and is a must-see.

If this was a normal day, we would of gotten lunch and tried to do something “fun” to offset the sadness. However, we had miles to go before we could sleep … so we jumped back in the car and headed west out of OKC. For the record, OKC is the 3rd town that we both agree we would like to spend a full day in (the other two so far are Chicago and Saint Louis).

We drove through Warr Acres, right past where we had dinner the previous night, and then through the towns of Yukon (home of Yukon’s Best Flour) and El Reno. At this point, we took an option to drive up pre-’33 66 through Calumet and Geary and then back south to meet up with post-’33 66 before going over the Pony Bridge (1933 – 38 pony or small trusses) that crosses the South Canadian River. The bridge seemed to go on forever... and we would of liked to have taken a picture there, however, we had traffic on our bumper and there didn’t seem to be a place to safely pull over.

We then drove through Hydro and Weatherford; stopping for a drive-thru lunch at McDonald’s. This was our first “fast-food” meal that we have had during this trip – since we tried to eat at other local roadside establishments instead. We knew that we still had miles till our Hotel for the night, so we felt that doing this was necessary (and indeed, it did help).

At this point, we experienced the mind-numbing (but funny at the same time) experience of what the construction of I-40 did to Route 66 in the area. From Weatherford to east of Sayre (about 50 highway miles), we crossed the interstate 10 times! We were not sure if this was because the road twisted and turned that much, if the frontage roads that we were driving on ended up ahead (whether by design or because it was on private property), or a combination of the two.

Our next stop was Clinton, where we visited the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum. It takes about an hour to see everything here, and the museum is quite well done. It offers some great information about how 66 was formed, why the migrants followed it to California, and how the road was used until the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Afterwards, we drove to Elk City, which was our third museum stop of the day – The National Route 66 Museum. We were a little disappointed with our visit here. Although seeing the artifacts from the route was interesting, there was little content to go along with them. If you have to choose between the OK and the National museums, we would recommend seeing the Oklahoma 66 museum.

After our stop in Elk City, we made the decision to press on to Groom, TX for the night. We drove through Sayre (where we mailed the third postcard!) and Erick, which was the hometown of Roger Miller (King of the Road) and Sheb Wooley (Purple People Eater). Next, we were in Texas!

By now, the landscape had drastically changed. While eastern and central Oklahoma had been hilly and lush with trees, the panhandle of Texas is flat, flat, and more flat! There is really only brush, and not many trees at all. Considering we are both native east coasters, we are quite taken with the scenery!

We drove through Shamrock and McLean, which was the last town on the route to be bypassed by I-40, and into Alanreed. There was a dirt option that we could have followed here, but it was raining and we lack a four wheel drive vehicle. Finally we arrived in Groom.

We have to stay that Groom has certainly been our most rustic stay on the trip so far. The town is tiny, and its only claims to fame our its leaning water tower and giant 190 foot cross. We ate dinner at the town’s seemingly only restaurant – Dairy Queen, and retired for the night with some TV. We are definitely eager to get back on the road this morning. On to Santa Fe!