Leaving the snow white dunes of White Sands National Monument behind we ventured further east on our Coast to Coast journey towards St Louis. We noticed we would pass by the small New Mexico town of Roswell. Initially for a bit of laugh we thought we’d have to stop and check out the UFO Museum which detailed the infamous ‘incident’ in 1947, as well as other related information, and basically left it up to you to decide what you think happened that day. The museum would have been awesome…in 1970, which didn’t help its validity of their obvious agenda - interesting nonetheless.
As we moved further east through the Bible Belt, we saw the “western hemisphere’s largest cross”, called the Groom Cross, as well as Cadillac Ranch along route 66.
About 15 minutes after crossing the Texas boarder we were pulled over by a state trooper for being three miles over the speed limit…. It was obvious he thought the van, with Californian plates, looked pretty dodgy and badass and wanted to check it out. He was nice enough though and sent us off with only a warning. We may have only been In Texas a day, but it definitely lived up to its stereotypes; it has the most unbelievably vast feedlots (imagine about 30,000 cows in the area of a small city block (That’s where all your meat patties come from)!), we saw redneck incidents involving breaking beer bottles, bullet casings on the street in Amarillo.
While in Texas we took the opportunity to dineout and enjoy a local steak, but we’d have to turn down the offer of a free 72oz steak (if you could eat it within an hour). That’s over TWO KILOGRAMS of meat, madness. We opted for a size we were more accustomed to.
After hundreds more miles of nothing but farmland we hit Oklahoma and the first rain we have had in the 30 days we had been in the Western United States; the run was over. We visited the 1995 bombing memorial which is located at the site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that was destroyed by the explosion. The Oklahoma City National Memorial was very well done and I’m sure the families would be pleased the way it turned out.
Next was St Louis – gateway to the west; well it was 150 years ago. The symbol of St Louis is its massive arch (the largest in the world) and the Museum underneath it. The American Mid-West Museum was extremely well done, but I did feel for the Native Indians who lost everything as America expanded west into the Great Plains region. Hundreds more miles of ever increasing productive farmland followed our time in St Louis, soon we’d be in Chicago where we’ll kick off the next leg of our intrepid Coast to Coast journey.
