We headed back to Oklahoma City to wrap up some of the things we hadn’t done yesterday. We were driving down the highway and when we got to the city, a pickup truck pulled up next to us, and the couple honked to get our attention. They told us that we had just lost our hubcap on the road, and it had gone flying down the highway! We’d scraped the hubcap recently by getting too close to the curb when parking, and that probably contributed to it coming off. No surprises, but this was yet again on the right hand side of the RV (the front wheel). It’s definitely not our good side!
Did you know that Oklahoma City has a network of tunnels underneath the city? Oklahoma Underground is a network of tunnels and underground concourses beneath downtown Oklahoma City, originally developed in the 1970s to help people avoid harsh weather. Stretching for about a mile, it connects many office buildings, parking garages, and businesses. The tunnels are closed on weekends, but today was a Monday, so we headed over to the Sheraton Hotel, one of the places where it’s easiest to access the tunnels by going to the Basement level. The tunnels are color coded by area (we saw yellow, green and purple), with artwork displayed on the walls. While some sections are quieter, others host cafes, barber shops, and small retail stores, and there was construction still being done to create (or update) areas that would soon have new businesses popping up underground.
At BancFirst (which we got to from one of the tunnels), there’s multiple artworks by Dr. Dan Molina, and what’s cool is that similar to “The Majestic” mural we saw in Wichita, if you scan a QR code, it opens up an augmented reality app that brings each artwork to life when you hover over it! This one was really fun because it played different pop songs as well.
Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum
We returned to the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum after spending some time around the ground yesterday. It costs $15 per adult, and it is a self-guided journey that includes interviews with survivors, rescuers, and families, as well as numerous artifacts from the building including personal items, office equipment, and a lot of rubble. There's an enclosed room with an office desk that features a recording of a meeting that was taking place at the time of the bombing, where you suddenly hear the blast and people panicking in the aftermath, and also read and listen to numerous accounts from people of what happened that day. It's incredibly emotional and saddening, 30 years on.
Additionally, there's details about how Timothy McVeigh and his accomplices were caught, details of the trial, and an exhibit that details domestic security in the aftermath of the bombing. We were kind of surprised to see a lot of space in the Museum focused on McVeigh in conjunction to paying respects to the victims and survivors, but perhaps it's also there to show the whole picture of what happened, and educate visitors about the aftermath and ways to fortify security measures.
Skeletons out of the Closet: The Museum of Osteology
We've been to many museums on this trip (particularly on this stretch of the midwest), but the Museum of Osteology in Oklahoma City is the only museum focused on the science of bones and skeletons. The founder, Jay Villemarette, found a skeleton of a dog when he was a boy, setting off a lifelong fascination with skeletons. It costs $14 per adult, and even at the entrance area, there are already heaps of bovine skeletons above the door! To the right of the entrance there's a couple of displays showing dermestid (flesh-eating) beetles busy at work, cleaning skulls that would probably end up in the museum.
The museum is 2 levels, but is absolutely packed with skeletons from all sorts of animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish from all the world. To make the museum even more interactive, there are various scavenger hunts for different age groups, and for adults we had a crossword to fill in with answers to questions we could find on the different displays. Some of the largest skeletons include a massive humpback whale suspended from the ceiling, as well as an elephant and giraffe you can stand beside. We saw quite a few Aussie animal skeletons, including one for a platypus, a koala, and a few bird species. The museum was very well organized and informative, although we will add that there were some facts that were a bit off (for example, there's a skeleton for a Tasmanian "wolf" but nobody calls it that, they're know as Tasmanian tigers. Also, there's a height chart where you can see what animal you're the same height as that ends at 8 feet, the apparent height of the world's tallest man ever, but he was 8 foot 11 inches. This info didn't escape Michael!).
Hot Laundry and Cold Casino
We were overdue for a laundry run, and found a place where we could get our closed washed outside of Oklahoma City. It seems however, that 3-4pm is the hottest time of the day, and our RV, sitting in the parking lot directly under the sun, had no shade or respite from the beating sun. We had to put our clothes through the dryer as well, so when we retrieved them and brought them back in, they were steaming hot, making us sweat even more just standing and folding them!
South of Oklahoma City in the town of Norman, we parked and stayed at Riverwind Casino, a fairly big casino with ample parking for RVs and trucks. It was big enough that a shuttle came to pick us up from our parking space, and we could call for one at the casino to get back. We went in to cool down, and the air-conditioning at this place was turned up so high that we actually got cold! Lisette headed back to the RV with Sheila while Michael hung around. While there was rain overnight that momentarily helped to cool things down, it didn't last long enough for the RV to drop in temperature and give us all a more comfortable night's sleep.
Route Map
[…] to when we visited Oklahoma City, downtown Houston also has a network of underground tunnels connecting buildings, to give people […]