7.9.2012.

Day three started in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Well, Norman, Oklahoma to be exact. We stayed the night at my friend Devon's house, which is just south of Oklahoma City. When I told my 8th graders that I went to Oklahoma City this summer, they wanted to know if I went to an OKC Thunder game. Nope. We did go see the memorial, though, which I think was a better use of our time.

I obviously remember that the bombing in Oklahoma City happened but I think I was about nine years-old at the time so my memories are pretty faded and even then, I didn't really know what had happened. The memorial had several places that told a little of the story and if we'd gone into the museum, I'm sure we would have gotten a complete vision of what happened that day.

We entered from the west side which has this big wall with an inscription on it.  

You can look through the opening across the reflection pool and there's a wall exactly like it on the other side. These walls symbolize the city's (and nation's) crossover from innocence to hope through extreme circumstances. On the inner sides of the walls are the time stamps of the minute before and the minute after the bombing itself . The times on the wall are 9:01 and 9:03; the bombing itself happened at 9:02 am April 19, 1995. The reflective pool is in place of the road in front of the building that was bombed.

Along the west side of the reflective pool, on the ground where the building had stood, is a lawn filled with empty chairs. Each chair has the name of a person who was killed in the bombing. The larger ones are adults and the smaller ones are children. They're arranged into rows based on the floor of the building that they were on, and on the east side there are five chairs outside the formation which represent the five people who died on the street outside.

There's a wall built with tiles that children from around the country decorated and sent in after the bombing in support of those affected by it.

This tree is called the Survivor Tree. It stood across the street from the building that was bombed and withstood the force of the attack. It stands as a symbol of resilience.

I was so impressed by the memorial. The symbolism was powerful and touching and it was really easy to see and feel the impact that that day and the time following it has had on that city as well as the country. After visiting the memorial, Jaime and I both were really curious about the reasons behind it and what had led up to it. I spent a lot of time on wikipedia as Jaime was driving, reading articles related to the bombing.

While in Oklahoma, we hit up Braum's, which is apparently famous for their ice cream.

Jaime tried to get me to taste her blue ice cream but I refused. It looks radioactive.

That afternoon, my love affair with the South began, starting with Arkansas. Arkansas is gorgeous. I loved the rolling hills and dense trees. Loved.it.

We stopped in Little Rock for dinner that night. Little Rock is along the Arkansas River and has a nice riverfront area with an ampitheater and market.

We went to the Flying Fish and tried catfish for the first time. Tastes pretty much like most other kinds of fish...

That night we ran into some heavy traffic delays in eastern Arkansas due to construction. They'd been warning about it for miles but it never actually materialized so I hadn't really been too worried about it. It showed up, though, and in full force. It took us I think 40 minutes to go just a few miles. As soon as we hit the traffic, we realized we were pretty much out of gas and the closest exit wasn't for a few miles. In normal driving conditions, we'd be fine, but in stand-still traffic, I was worried we'd idle away all our gas. So we turned the radio off and said a prayer, asking forgiveness for not being more prepared and asking for help to just reach the next exit. I'm not exaggerating when I say that within a few minutes, my gas gauge was hovering around a quarter tank, when only a few minutes before it had been on E. We made it to the gas station without problems and went merrily on our way. I know that Heavenly Father was looking out for us, heard our prayer, and sent us a very real miracle that night. It reminds me of Christ's analogy that he is the bread of life and the fountain of living water. If we come to him, we will never hunger and never thirst. We will apparently also never run out of gas.