What to do on Monday when all the museums are closed!

It is Monday, October 20, and we are getting down to our last days of travel. I went through all my tour books and wrote down places to see. I found the Oklahoma City National Memorial for my National Parks passport stamp, and the town of Guthrie OK to tour, so we were off on I-40 to visit those sites.

As soon as we entered Oklahoma the roads turned to ruts and all the way through the state we had lousy road conditions. However, I did find myself singing “Oklahoma” as we crossed the plains and saw all the cows in their pastures.

We got to Oklahoma City about noon and found the Memorial. They have done an excellent job in creating the site. There is a reflecting pool on Fifth Street where the bomb was placed in front of the Federal Building. They have preserved some of the walls and an elm tree that survived. There are two giant black gates at either end of the reflecting pool. Possibly the most moving sight was the 168 bronze chairs set in rows representing each person who had died. There were 19 smaller chairs representing the children who were killed. Someone had placed teddy bears on the smaller chairs, and there were stones and pine cones on some of the larger chairs.

Then we drove on to Guthrie OK which is just north of Oklahoma City and the site of the territorial capitol. It is another well preserved and interesting town with lots of historic buildings, museums, and stores. However, Monday is their off day so hardly anything was open. The only stores open were a fabric shop and a yarn store. Poor me! I did manage to find something to buy. And we did enjoy walking around admiring the building’s facades. We spent the night in Guthrie.