Vaca 2021, Day 2 - Wal Mart, OKC Memorial, Baker Mayfield's College's, & Lot's More Driving

I got up with the 6am alarm and I might just as well have as I was having a hard time sleeping.  My back and shoulders weren't happy with the bed and I just couldn't get comfy in any way.

On top of that, we needed to return to the Wally World for returning some of the clothing items that did not work out from our last minute shopping trip the previous evening.  Lesley was going to return to Wal Mart while I got everything packed up and ready to go (yes, she STILL trusted me with this task!).  She got their right at 7am only to find out that in WM's infinite wisdom, they do not staff customer service until 8am.

She returned to the hotel and the 3 of us not named Rob had breakfast together.  Rob was still in the room as he wanted to shower, but when I went back upstairs from the lobby with coffee for him, he was still in bed and hadn't been thru the shower yet!

Once we finally got everyone clean, fed and packed, we headed back to Wally's Revenge one more time to return the clothing.  Success!

It's time to hit the road!  We drove down to OKC and did a quick tour of the memorial.

It was interesting to tell the boys about how we were living in Tulsa when this event happened.  We had moved to Tulsa in July of 1994 and the bombing happened on April 19th, 1995 while I was sleeping as I worked at the local Venture store as an overnight stocker.

 

Almost looks like a scene from a movie like Ferris Bueller's Day Off in the way that my peeps are spaced.  Nothing funny about that fence tho...  I had to stop reading the tributes as they were making my eyes sweat.

The chairs get me every time, especially the small chairs that represent the kiddos who were killed in this nonsense.

A little heart made of pennies.  I would like to find the pictures that we took the last time we visited here as I'm pretty sure these were here at that time.  I think that would have been in 2007.

When we left here, Rob wanted to drive thru Norman, OK if it wasn't too inconvenient, as he wanted to see the University of Oklahoma campus and more importantly, the football stadium, where Baker Mayfield of his Browns played some college ball!  The football stadium is impressive, to say the least!!

Back on the road thru Chickasha, Elgin, Lawton and finally into Texas  at Witchita Falls.  The next stop was at Ranchland Gas in Benjamin, TX, where Caleb was next up at the wheel.  Oh... ah, nope.  Not correct.  Lesley drove first with Rob running the map.  We stopped at a historical marker on the side of the road and at that point, Caleb took the wheel and continued driving until Lorenzo, TX.  He was a nervous boy and kept talking about how sweaty he was!  

This whole time, I was in the back of the van, trying to fold my over-sized carcass up into any shape that would allow me to sleep.  I couldn't.  I eventually just sat back up so I could see what was going on better.

A lot of the area of Texas that we were driving thru looked pretty much like this.

Back to driving I went and we passed thru Lubbock, TX, the sight of the tour kick-off for KISS's best album, Revenge, and the other site of Baker Mayfield's college ball.  This too, while smaller from our vantage point, was a beautiful stadium!

We drove, and drove, and drove, finally arriving in Carlsbad, NM, where we were staying in an Air Bn'B that was a camper in a dudes driveway.

Our fancy digs for two nights.  You can see the roof of cabin in the upper left corner that is behind the fence and then another camper on the far right.  All 3 are for rent and were rented.  There was also a very friendly kitty who roamed these grounds.

We had a fantastic dinner at Yellow Brix restaurant and hit up a grocery store to see if we could find any local beers to bring home.  We did!

Hopefully we all  sleep good as we tour Carlsbad Caverns in the morning!