Long day with a solemn finish
So the drive to Oklahoma City felt quite long since we didn’t leave at 4:30 AM as we did the prior day. We wound up not getting into OKC until around 8:30. The original room we were assigned at the La Quinta reeked of cigarette smoke, despite supposedly being a smoke free room. The cigarette burn on top of the set of drawers was another nice touch. We got a free upgrade to a bigger, better, less smelly room with a microwave and fridge even though we had no need for the additional amenities.
We wasted little time before we changed and headed right out to eat. Cindy had spent a lot of time on her iPhone scouting out the area ahead of time and found a nice sounding place close by named Pearls Fish House.
The place was nice indeed but very sparsely patronized at that time of night. I think there may have been two or three other groups of people eating there, that’s it. The small amount of people didn’t have anything to do with the food, which was excellent. Cindy and I both enjoyed our meals although we didn’t spend much time enjoying them. Despite the late hour we wanted to see one thing in Oklahoma City, the national monument on the site of the former federal building that was bombed in 1995. Cindy read that it some ways it is actually better to see at night.
Getting to the monument was a bit frustrating. Evidently they redid some of the highways in the area recently, more recently than the version of maps that is in my van GPS. We wound up getting sent on a maddening series of wrong turns until we finally found our way to the memorial site.
As you approach the monument there is a chain link fence that borders the sidewalk. This fence has become a memorial in itself. Thousands of people have left little mementos over the years hanging there. It was a sad but powerful thing to see. Cindy felt very sad as she walked the entire length of fence, looking at the various objects left there, rubber bracelets, necklaces, pictures, stuffed animals, all meaning something different to every person. She said she felt like she should leave something. She asked if I would mind if she left the Bar-barian bracelet I gave her awhile back. I said it was fine. She took it off and carefully attached it to one of clips on the fence.
Once you got inside the memorial the visual was powerful. In a perfectly manicured lawn you saw all of these lighted chairs, one for each person that died in the explosion. Each chair had the persons name on it and they were arranged in a manner that correlated with where they were in the building. I felt an additional wave of sadness when I realized some of the chairs were smaller than the others, signifying the children that died that day as well.
In the middle of the monument was a large rectangular area that had water only a fraction of an inch deep over black granite. At either end were large walls, one had 9:01 on it and the other 9:03, the two minutes that flanked the time of the explosion, 9:02 AM.
There were only a couple dozen people walking around with us at that time of night. We walked the inner and outer perimeter, not saying much but thinking a lot about the weight of what we were looking at. What a terrible, terrible tragedy…
They really did a beautiful job with the memorial site. I am glad we took the time to see it.
Today we have yet another hellishly long drive ahead of us, just short of 800 miles. We are currently rolling through Kansas with an eventual destination of Durango, CO this evening. In all the road trips I have taken I have logged a lot of long days of driving but never have I strung this many long driving days consecutively. It will be worth it as we look back but it would be nice to be semi-retired where trips like this could be digested at a more leisurely pace.
I am not injecting pictures into these posts as I normally would because of the limits of back of the van internet access. Of course I have been taking a number of pics, here is the link to the FB album which contains them.