Heading South - Day 1

JOHN - Since I was staying in Normal Monday night, at my old apartment, and Jayma was at her parents, we agreed to meet in Lincoln around 8:00 AM. If Jayma came to B-N, it'd be going out of her way so we felt that Lincoln was the easiest place to meet up. However, Jayma was (SHOCKING!) running a little late so I decided to keep on moving to Springfield where we met at a hotel parking lot. We talked, compared notes, came up with a game plan, looked at the map and got moving.

One thing to know, Jayma and I did NOT come up with a route until the morning of our departure. In fact, it wasn't until we met in the parking lot where we finally decided on a specific route! As you can see, we are not the best planners. Thankfully, my wonderful Aunt Cindy went to AAA and got us a ton of maps and books as well as detailed directions. However, even after all of that, Jayma wanted to go by what her GPS said and so I finally agreed to follow her. But as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men...

When we got to St. Louis, we were supposed to continue south on 55. Somewhere in the mess that is the Missouri Highway system, we missed our turn-off and ended up on 44W. We called each other on the phone and pulled over somewhere in St. Louis. I immediately got the atlas out and AAA's directions. AAA recommended that we head west on 44 and go through Oklahoma which contradicted the GPS (the GPS wanted us to go south through Missouri and west through Arkansas). After a quick conversation, Jayma and I agreed that we were going to take 44W because it seemed the most direct and easiest to follow. Let me just say, thank you for happy mistakes!!

As we drove through Missouri, I never realized how hilly it was. It wasn't the most beautiful of states (as if Illinois is, right?) but it was good to be traveling through Cardinal country. Once we got to Oklahoma, we had to pay a $4 toll. The one thing we found surprising about 44W while in OK was that there were not exits. I think we drove for well over an hour before we saw any kind of exit. We got through Tulsa and stopped for gas and potty break. By the way, the exit toll costs $2, as well. Since it was about 4:00 PM, we decided that since Oklahoma City was so close, we'd go see the OKC Memorial. We are so glad we did.

We arrived at the OKC Memorial around 6:30. It was pretty warm but the sun was shining and there was not a cloud in the sky. OKC's rush traffic was nil so getting into the city was pretty easy. It's not as big a city as I believed but it seemed pretty clean and easy to travel through. We went to the Memorial and it was quite the sobering experience. If you've never been there, I highly recommend you take the time to see it. It's a beautiful tribute to all the innocent lives lost on that fateful day in April 1995. Seeing the chairs represent a life lost in the explosion was heart wrenching. Once I saw the lone tree that survived the blast, I became filled with emotion. I told Jayma that this tree represented life and not death and it's purpose was to inspire people. This experience was very moving and it's an important part of American history. The 9/11 tragedy has seemed to overshadow this but I really believe every American should visit this Memorial.

After we left the Memorial and grabbed some McD's, we decided we were pretty tired and wanted to stop for the night. We looked at the atlas again and decided we were going to drive one more hour and then stop for the night. We looked at the map and decided that Paul's Valley looked like a decent sized town and that's where we were going to lay our heads for the evening.

On the way to Paul's Valley, I saw a billboard that said "Largest Action Figure Museum in Paul's Valley." Well, I am sure you can guess what I asked Jayma the minute we parked? That's right, we were going to the Action Figure Museum the very next day!!

We got a room at the Day's Inn, cranked up the A/C and fell asleep after a couple of showers. We were a little stinky from sitting in our cars all day long!! Needless to say, we fell asleep pretty quickly! We knew we had another long day ahead of us but we had already completed more than half our journey!