Oklahoma City, Edmond, and Arcadia, OK

From Amarillo we drove to Oklahoma City.   Our main objective in stopping in Oklahoma City was to see the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.   On our travels we had talked to many other campers who advised us not to miss seeing the memorial of the bombing of April 19, 1995.  

We made the visit to the memorial and museum our first stop the next day.   The day was beautiful - warm and sunny.   Our GPS system had trouble with I-40 in Oklahoma City, as she was forever saying "recalculating".   Evidently the area had undergone some serious highway revisions.   Thankfully the city provided directional signs indicating exits we needed to take to get downtown to the Museum and Memorial.  

The Memorial Museum is in the former Journal Record Building which stands across the street from the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.    The museum is arranged in such a way that the first area discusses the history of the neighborhood around the Murrah Building.   From that area you are taken into a committee room and hear the official recording of an OK Water Resources Board meeting from 4/19/1995.   The meeting, just across the street from the Murrah Building started at 9:00 a.m.   Two minutes into the recording the lights went out and the bombing could clearly be heard.  

We left the committee room and walked into an area with a bank of tv sets showing helicopter footage of the building taken at 9:13 a.m. and subsequent coverage by US and foreign tv stations.  Most moving was to hear of the experiences of the people who survived the bombing, and the rescue teams who arrived on the scene.  

After the museum we walked outside to the Memorial.    The most moving portion of the Memorial is the field of empty chairs.   Each of the 168 chairs symbolize a life lost, with smaller chairs representing the 19 children killed.

The next day was cold and wet.   We decided to tour the Overholser Mansion built in 1903 on the outskirts of Oklahoma City.   It was built by Henry Overholser, the man known as the Father of Oklahoma City.   The house has original furnishings, and the first floor retains its looks of the 1900's, while the second floor had been modernized by subsequent descendants of the original builder.

After lunch we visited a Banjo Museum.    The museum traced the roots of the banjo from Africa to the slaves of the south, the Roaring 20's and on to current players.   The banjos displayed were beautiful -- two floors of them!

It was clear but cool the next day,  and we drove to Arcadia, OK to visit the Historic Old Round Barn.  The barn was built in the 1800's as a deterrent to tornadoes, as it was said a tornado would go around a round barn, and not through it.   It fell into disrepair and finally Luther Robison saved the barn with the help of a volunteer group known as the "over-the-hill gang", since most of the volunteers were over 65 years of age.   They rebuilt the barn and now use the second floor for dances, as it was originally used and the lower level contains the history of the barn and a gift shop.   While we were there, people stopped from all over the country - motorcycle groups, and tourists like us.  

Our final outing was a stop at the Edmond Historical Society Museum in Edmond.   It is housed in the old National Guard Armory and covers Edmond history from prehistoric times to the present.   The Children's Interactive Center has hands-on exhibits designed for children ages 5-12.   From Edmond it was back to the campground to begin hitching up as we wanted an early start to Little Rock, Arkansas the next day.