Oklahoma City (day 2)

Our time in Oklahoma City went by way too quickly. We had couchsurfer hosts lined up further south in both Fort Worth and San Antonio, Texas but we wanted to squeeze in some more touring before heading down the road again. First stop was the Oklahoma State Capital Building.

But first, we have to thank couchsurfing hosts Luis and Kevin who agreed to host us at the last minute in Oklahoma City. Thanks for your generosity guys!

Kevin, Luis, Ruth, and Kevin

So we got an early start and headed over to the State Capitol Building. There are a couple of things that make the capitol building interesting. First, it is located quite a bit out of the city center. We drove over there and found some free parking on a side street. It was another beautiful blue sky day! We never get tired of that!

Look at that clear blue sky!

The second thing, is that the main part of the building was constructed in 1915 but they ran out of money and the dome was never built. In 2002, they finally built the dome at a cost of $22M. 

We did the 9:00am tour, and we were the only ones on it! Here's Ruth with our guide Bill.

The inside of the dome is beautiful!

In 1915, these fans cooled off the assembly room. It's air conditioned now of course, but these original fans  are still operated.

Next stop was back at the Oklahoma City bomb memorial. Even though we had seen the outdoor memorial yesterday, we wanted to see the actual museum. It's tough to find free parking, but there's a Bass Pro Shop near downtown so we parked there and then took the free trolley bus back to the center. The museum is fairly expensive at $12 per adult, but it was supposed to be quite good.

And it is. We're usually pretty quick to go through these types of exhibits, but we were in there almost two hours! It's really well done, and the stories of the thousands of people affected by one man's actions really tug at your heart strings.

Lots of displays of items taken from the wreckage.

The door at the left is steel!

Pieces of the Ryder truck that Timothy McVeigh had filled with explosives.

The museum is housed in the building that was right next door to the bombing location. The majority of it was restored, but they left one room as it was to show the damage...

This used to be the men's washroom.

They also go into great detail about the investigation and how they traced the Ryder truck rental from the identification numbers found on the shredded and twisted wreckage of the rear axle housing of the truck. McVeigh was found guilty of murder and was executed in 2001.

On to nicer things. We had tickets to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Not normally our thing, but we were in the neighbourhood so we stopped in. We were actually glad that we did, but only because of one exhibit by an artist named Dale Chihuly who does glass work with different light illumination. It was really neat!

Us, and the ceiling display!

Neat stuff.

On the other hand, this stuff doesn't do anything for us. We don't get it.

By the time we left the art museum it was getting close to 2:00pm. We still had to do the drive to Fort Worth, Texas where couchsurfing hosts April and Brent had agreed to host us at the last minute. We stopped for some food along the way, so we didn't arrive at their place until around 7:30pm. We just sat and talked until around 11:00pm, and they were off to work this morning so we'll have to make an effort to get back through this way again sometime.

Kevin, Ruth, April, and Brent. We meet so many nice people in our travels!

Yesterday's drive, 215 miles (350 kms). Today, we're off to San Antonio!