Cumulative miles driven: 1,780

We were fortunately less than 'Twenty four hours from Tulsa' when we departed Little Rock in Arkansas and it actually turned out to be around six hours by the time we had taken the back roads rather than the Interstate highway. Tulsa turned out to be a pleasant place considering they are also possibly at the 'Center of tbe Universe', or at least they have a spot by this name just outside of downtown. It turned out that this circular area enables you to stand and talk without being heard by others outside of the circle but you can hear yourself at a far higher volume! It kind of worked . . . . . but the location close to a multi story car park and the old railway station is not really that prodigious a place to covert the associated name.

Our actual destination was Oklahoma City, somewhere that is famous (or probably infamous) for the horrific bombing of a US government federal building at 09.02 on the 19th April 1995 by Timothy McVeigh. This event left a total of 168 men, women and children dead. The site of the building and the street where McVeigh left the truck full of explosives is now occupied by a memorial garden adjacent to which is a museum. We spent over four hours in this sadly interesting, sombre museum and memorial garden area.

After a late BBQ lunch we headed for the Bricktown area of the city with its many bars and restaurants and chanced upon the American Banjo Museum. Being honest, banjos are not really something that we know much about and we dithered a bit before paying this museum a visit and handing over our $6.00 each. Not only was this museum worthy of a stop we also got a chance to pluck those strings and try to play a tune. Needless to say we failed on the latter!

So we rounded off our time in Oklahoma City by collecting a Chinese takeaway from a nearby restaurant to hopefully enjoy in our room with a bottle of Arkansas wine. The food was unfortunately, just as we remembered from our last foray into US Chinese food about fifteen years ago, gloopy, tastless and maybe the blandest offering of the trip so far. It was so different to the food we get at home and that we had eaten in Asia that it makes you wonder how it can be possible. Needless to say most was not eaten. The wine too was a let down but we had a back up bottle of Californian Pinot Noir that saved the day.

There was too much to see in Oklahoma City and our one full day wasn't really sufficient.. In order to enjoy some of the other museums, watch a baseball game in Bricktown and eat at some of the many decent looking restaurants in the downtown area we will have to come back at sometime in the future.