Stories around the campfire

checking the footie scores

  

 

Hey people it’s posting time again!! Jonny writing again, Jill’s still on writers strike so you’re stuck with me I’m afraid.

 

 

 

Tonight we have a campfire going outside our cabin here at the minute, really living the outdoors life….apart from the fact I’ve got a laptop sitting on my knee which is picking up a wireless connection to the internet! It’s cool though we even tried toasting some marshmallows on it earlier but kinda burnt them a bit. The diabetics among us even had a couple.

 

So where do I start with filling you in on events since we last spoke….how about the little ex-military woman who cornered us for a chat last night after we had brushed our teeth at the toilet block (in the sinks not actual toilets!). We ended up talking to her for about an hour about everything from what we were doing on our travels to places she had been posted to while in the US army. Also managed to squeeze in topics such as the presidential election, the current economic crisis, the origins of the protestant/catholic tensions in Northern Ireland, how she would if given the chance kill Osama bin Laden herself and the free movement of  people within the EU. So a pretty interesting conversation but after all that we didn’t even find out what her name was!

 

Today we headed into downtown Oklahoma City. We started of at the IHOP, now this isn’t some sort of physical exercise centre it actually stands for International House Of Pancakes. And very nice it was too! We then wandered around an area of the city called Bricktown. All the streets here have strips of red bricks laid in the footpaths. You can pay about $50 dollars and have your name inscribed on one of them if you want.

 

Our wanderings then led us over to the Oklahoma City National Memorial. There is a big museum and park area built on the site of the Oklahoma bombing. The museum is really well done and takes you through the story of the events on the day of the bombing in 1995. The park outside has a grassy area where the federal building that was blown up used to stand, this has an empty bronze chair for every person who died, 168 in total. The whole experience was quite moving not least because it gives you a picture of the devastation it caused and this was all pre 9/11.

the field of empty chairs

 

 

 

We headed over to the botanical gardens later on which were pretty good. Lots of tropical plants in there funnily enough! Also a couple parrots in the reception area that wolf whistled at us when we walked past…..what can I say they must have good taste J

 

 

Tomorrow we are back on the road and the next stop is Amarillo, Texas. We actually randomly bumped into a man on the street today that was walking the same direction as us. Turned out he was from Texas and on hearing we were headed to Amarillo said ‘There’s not much there kids, apart from cattle. It’s big cattle farmin’ country over there’. Here was me thinking we would meet Tony Christie and the love of his life Marie!!

 

So that pretty much brings us back to the campfire and the sound of the crickets all under a clear starry sky. This holiday malarkey is tough you know!