Route66 Oklahoma Kansas – I AM LEGEND

16-17 June 2013: Days 33 & 34 of 43 – Galena KANSAS (State 18), Miami, Foyil, Cartoosa, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Moore OKLAHOMA (State 19). 
Route66: Days 4 & 5 of 13. 
Overnights in Oklahoma City, OKLAHOMA. 
Period 694km, Route66: 576 for 1,537km, Total 13,095km. 

Tulsa and Oklahoma City are ghost towns on Sunday and during working hours. No one is in the centre. I could stand in the middle of the road and take pictures. More on these “Okla” cities later. It was easy rejoining Route 66 in Springfield MISSOURI some 46 miles (74km) from Branson MISSOURI.  

From Springfield MISSOURI to the Kansas border it was smooth sailing along 66 at 60miles/h or 100km/h. Not much on the road but the scenery was very soothing – huge wheels of hay across vast fields of green like aliens with fluffy clouds in the background extending out for miles. We drove exactly 12miles (20km) through the bottom right hand corner of the state where we saw our first Route 66 

markings on the road and stopped in a ghost town called Galena that had literally been shut down the way it was in the sixties. An old rusted school bus, old cinema with blank neon sign, bordered up bars and clothing stores. This is the point of Route 66 – to create a vast outdoor museum of the past – all along a road! Route 66 in Oklahoma, like Missouri, had very few Route 66 signage – Bubba Gump (and Thelma & Louise, as we later found out at dinner) had to keep pulling in to gas stations to verify that the road outside was a Route 66 road! Another way to tell if you are on 66 without being sure is to see a bunch of bikies cruising along on the road. This is now the most popular way to do the famous route. The other thing we noticed was the large number of mobile homes and caravans. Many of the stationary caravans are as a result of the GFC – people who lost their homes live in them. We noticed more ghost towns and roadside relics on Route 66 in Oklahoma. Many old gas stations still with the price of fuel on them as it was at the time – 15 to 18 cents per gallon (or 5 cents a litre). Amazing. The highlight came 2.5 miles (4km) out of Miami OK – old 66 – yes we found 1.25miles (2km) of original white bitumen Route 66 road, half smashed and buried in gravel. It was built in 1926 as an alternative to the red brick road (we had discovered outside Springfield ILLINOIS) and is only 9ft (2.7m) width 

– you could lie across it with hands extended above your head! It was an amazing find and almost archaeological. Further down, about 4 miles (6km) from a town called Foyil was the world’s largest totem poles built by locals out of concrete to commemorate the Cherokee tribe who ended up in Oklahoma as a result of the 1839 expulsion that you read about in a previous blog. The town of Catoosa, 30 miles downstream is home to a giant fibreglass Blue Whale built on the side of a local lake to allow children a place to swim and fish from in summer. Very tacky but Bubba didn’t want to leave! Oklahoma has the longest continuous single stretch of Route66 road of 110miles (177km) from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. Tulsa OKLAHOMA (pop 960,480) is architecturally sound but a ghost town. Admittedly we arrived on a Sunday arvo but still, you could run every red light and not hit a single person or vehicle – it was like being on the movie set of “I am Legend” starring Will Smith. Art Deco buildings everywhere. The layout is the same as Texas cities – a bunch of CBD office towers surrounded by loads of empty space and freeway. Oklahoma City (pop 1.3m) is much the same. All four of us visited the city together the following day (Mon 17 June) and for a work day, very few people and cars were in the centre. 

We also noticed many people taking lunch at 11:30am – maybe it was the humidity? The freeway system in Oklahoma City is appalling – even with the GPS we got lost 2 times before finding the hotel and lost coming back from dinner. There are even traffic lights on the freeway overpasses – WTF!!! The night before Bubba Gump had attempted the Oklahoma staple – Chicken Fried Steak – which is actually a severely  over-crumbed beef schnitzel with a heavy creamy like gravy. 

I could not eat it – way too heavy but Mr Bubba seemed to have no trouble at all!!! Oklahoma City has set aside a permanent and moving memorial of the bombing of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building at 9:02am on 19 April 1995 resulting in the deaths of 168 people including 19 children in the nearby

day care centre. There is an outdoor grassy field of 168 empty chairs located where the building once stood and a museum in the actual restoration of the Journal Record Building that stood on the other side of the Federal Building car park. There is a “Reflecting Pool” between the chairs and the museum

that contains two huge arches at either end. One has “9:01” on it and the other “9:03” and there is a “9:02” etched at the bottom of the pool in its middle and every so often when the pool is completely still and you can see the reflection of the city in it – bubbles are released from the 9:02 section to symbolise the impact of the explosion on changing the face of the city and its peoples – very profound symbolism indeed. There is also a 90+ year old Elm tree that survived the blast just outside the museum. The Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum and Symbolic Memorial was officially opened on 19 April 2000 taking 3 years to build. The Oklahoma City CBD is small and very walkable. In minutes we were at the other end walking through the only skyscraper in town, the

Devon Building (largest Gas & Electricity provider for the state) through to the Botanic Gardens on the other side. This is the most novel gardens I have seen in any city. They are built within a rectangular amphitheatre dipping below street level with the gardens on terraces with a huge cylindrical green house in the middle extending across and above the gardens. Lots of green in a small space and right below the tallest building in town – a good look. Our CBD discovery ended in the Art Museum café – unfortunately museum was closed. Stockyards City and the Oklahoma National Stockyards and Auction House is only 3 miles (5km) away and the highlight of our day.

They are the largest working yards in the USA. Fort Worth used to be the largest but is now a tourist site (as y’all know) and so looked nicer. We all walked along a huge cat walk, approx. 5m above the massive yards full of bulls, cows and loads of shite!!! Cowboys rustled the beasties into a huge red building, inside which was a stadium like auction room that smelled really bad! As expected, a stereotypical auctioneer mumbling at 1000/miles/hr as loads of cattle stampeded in, panicked and were rustled out. The stadium was filled with loads of gallon-hat cowboys pressing electronic buzzers to bid.

I sat next to cattle selling agent James Morrison who explained to me how it all worked. He mentioned the following interesting facts about the Oklahoma beef industry (number 1 next to oil and wheat): the market is very good (approx. 80% of past peak best), 10,000 head sold every week, 30% of which are exported with 80% of Eye Fillet & Rib eye cuts going to Japan. The most bred species is Angus. A typical sale we witnessed was: 26 head sold at $120.50 per head. Average weight per animal was 1,078lb (489kg). After discussing the highlights of our trip with James I just happened to ask about how the city was recovering from the recent

tornado and he recommended we go and have a look ourselves – I thought it was far away and inaccessible but at only 12miles and 20min later and we were in the middle of what looked like a war zone. We could not believe what had happened to Moore OKLAHOMA, actually a suburb of Oklahoma City at only 15miles from the CBD. Sadly we also came across the area that once housed the school in which 8 children were killed – a cross stood in the clearing for each one behind a wall of American flags and tributes and flowers. What really hit home for us was the very focused path of destruction of the twister – you could see

the “corridor” of destruction – on either side of the destroyed homes and cars were dwellings hardly touched. We also saw “touch spots” where the twister descends, touches the ground and then rises up again – there is a circle of debris surrounded by intact homes – very strange site indeed. 

We drove around freely looking at children’s toys buried in the rubble alongside flattened upside-down cars and many many tree stumps and branches. What particularly sent a chill up our collective spines was our GPS telling us that our hotel was only 15miles (24km) away on our return. Tonight’s dinner was spectacular, taking place 49 floors above Oklahoma City in the only skyscraper in town – the Devon Tower. Pre-dinner drinks and canapés overlooking the East with a huge Oklahoman Steak overlooking the South. We so charmed the staff that after dinner we received a private viewing over the rest of the compass in private rooms taking some spectacular photos.