Day 4 - Oklahoma City

We got up early again and headed across the Mississippi River into Arkansas.  The landscape continued to be very much like that of the Piedmont of NC.  We stopped in Ozark for lunch and I took over driving.  Large truck traffic increased as we went into Arkansas and most businesses you could see along the highway were trucking related.  I realized that the headquarters for Walmart is in Bentonville, AK, so it is likely that the truckers were shipping things to or from there.

I had always thought that truckers were some of the safest drivers on the road but after this trip I no longer feel that way.  The truckers would weave into neighboring lanes, they would cut in front of you as you would start to pass them and for the most part their disregard for others scared me half to death.  The automobile drivers were well behaved and overly cautious.  The truckers drove as if they owned the road and everyone should move out of their way.  Driving with so many trucks on the highway was extremely stressful and exhausting.

After we had been driving for an hour or so we could see dark clouds ahead and a storm approaching.  We discussed how we were in the middle of Tornado Alley.  The sky grew darker and darker and lightning flashed in the clouds.  Randy kept a check on the radar and could see that the storm was bad but not a long lasting one.  Suddenly the bottom fell out and almost as quickly the hail began.  The sound was almost deafening and it sounded like rocks hitting the hood and top of the car

We had seen on the news before leaving on our trip where hail had broken out car windows and that was my immediate thought...that our windows would be broken and our vacation plans would be messed up.  We fully expected to have dents all over.  We continued on and saw a bridge up ahead and pulled underneath until the storm passed.  Amazingly enough, there was no damage at all to the car and it would be the following week when devastating tornadoes would rip through towns near by.  

We arrived in Oklahoma City around 3 p.m. Or so, took a nap and went to Abuelo's in the Bricktown area for dinner.  We were excited to find Abuelo's, we had enjoyed the one in Chesapeake, VA when we lived in Currituck and we had really missed their food.  After we ate we walked over to their river walk and got a little exercise.  I had remembered doing a case study on Oklahoma City's revitalization of their downtown area by adding a river walk when I was at Salem College.

View from our hotel room

Tile mosaic at the beginning of the Riverwalk

The Oklahoma City river walk is still a sparsely inhabited area with many empty spaces.  The water doesn't seem to flow very much and tended to smell stagnant.  I think the idea will eventually catch on with vendors if they are persistent and do more to encourage full occupancy.  We headed back to the hotel and stayed up late talking before we went to sleep.  Tomorrow we would drive across Texas