I apologize in advance for any spelling errors this may inadvertently contain. It's after 11:30 and my body still thinks that it's an hour later.

Today, we got up and went around Oklahoma City a bit. The burger joint we were to eat at - a little place called Nic's Grill, which came highly recommended by DeeVee - was closed due to it being a Saturday. We moved on quickly and got to our next stop, the OKC bombing memorial.

It's highly moving stuff, it really is. Words really can't do emotions justice, and even less so in this case. You really do have to just see it.

Two black walls frame a large one-inch-deep reflecting pool, which glitters in spots from the coins tossed into it. The walls have "9:01" and "9:03" cut into the top of them, symbolizing 9:02 as the time of the blast. On one side of the pool lay a small hill, upon which sit 168 chairs, arranged in order of casualty by floor. Smaller chairs represent children. On the other side is a memorial garden, which has its end at a façade that has remained unpainted since the blast. It now houses the museum. Also part of the memorial is the a tree that somehow, miraculously, survived the blast, and is now known as the Survivor Tree.

Admittedly, I knew little of the attack before I went there, other than its perpetrator and his actions. There's an element of knowledge gained along with emotions felt when looking at these sorts of things. In a way, it's much scarier than the September 11th attacks, since instead of an attacker from without, the evil dwelled within the nation before inflicting such lasting pain on his own people - and then showed its most contemptible face when refusing to show remorse.

Afterwards, we wanted to see some of the downtown area, but seeing as we weren't planning to stay in Oklahoma City for very long and didn't want to get utterly lost on roads that our GPS insisted were not there and thus get behind on our schedule, we hopped back on I-40 and zipped on out.

One thing that I must mention about Oklahoma - it's ridiculously windy. All the time, there is anything from a brisk breeze to an all-out hurricane-like gale. Since there are not many geographic formations to stop it, the wind really does come sweeping down the plain - at the risk of drivers. The wind makes trees shiver and sometimes grow deformed, high poles sway precariously, flags stood straight-out constantly, and we kept getting battered by the closing doors and trunk of our car. Another interesting thing about the wind was how the cows adapted to it - they grouped themselves together, rear ends facing the brunt of the wind. They also grouped around shade if it was hot, still oriented in that odd direction. Chicago really shouldn't have the nickname of the Windy City - that should go to OKC.

Highway winds still gusting, the terrain was flat, only with rolling hills. As we got farther and farther west, even the rolling hills stopped - we could see for 9 or 10 miles straight, the micro-size silos in the distance the best view we could get of some Texas towns. Rodeo places occasionally popped up, though they were not in use. Wrought-iron signs straight from the old west delineated the territory of farmers - some haven't been changed since the turn of the century. Oil derricks and windmills, became more and more common the more west we got - some old-fashioned windmills which still worked as intended, as well as some more up-to-date alternative-energy-generating streamlined white ones. There's still a lot of wind energy that Oklahoma can tap, and I'm interested to see how they develop this in the future. Brief geographical interludes brought us canyons that dropped off, widening and shortening, cutting winding paths through the brush-dotted parched earth.

In Texas, the speed limit amps up to 75, and they don't even have a place to greet you until 100 miles into the state - on the other side of Amarillo! We haven't even seen this place yet, and we're halfway through the Panhandle! (I guess it's more of a "Congratulations, You Survived Amarillo!" place than a "Welcome to Texas!" place.)

Our first stop in Amarillo was the Quarter Horse Museum. Since we aren't nearly the same encyclopedia of horse facts that my grandmother is, and never will accrue that much equine knowledge, we still were able to enjoy the museum and its Hall of Fame. (I admit, we spent some time amateurishly giggling at hilarious horse names, but there is a lot of history in the museum, and we could still be ambling around it right now, reading all of the text everywhere, if we didn't have to sleep and go somewhere the day after.) They still use horses to move cattle from pasture to pasture, for instance - it's much easier than using vehicles. More hilariously, though, we learned that a horse named Possum was an important horse in the line of Traveler, and we learned a bit about the entire breeding process - without details, of course.

The Amarillo Sox are an Independent League team, which means that they aren't affiliated with any other professional baseball teams and as such have to rely solely on ticket sales, sponsorships, etc. to operate the league. We got to the stadium early, but it was a little too early - I'm just surprised we every got there, considering the mass of utterly boggling one-way streets. We finally checked into the hotel, then went back downstairs to see if we couldn't get a bite to eat before the game began.

Well, we couldn't eat in hotel due massive wedding party catering and planning, so we went elsewhere instead, navigating once again the bizarreness of the one-lane roads. By the time we got back and ate, it was time to leave for the ball game.

On our way to the game, our GPS tried "murdering us" (in the immortal words of my dad) because we requested that it not get us on I-40, which would have probably done that same job more easily. We eventually meandered around and got on a part of old Route 66, and we saw some crews filming part of the Food Network show "The Great Food Truck Race" - or at least, I think it was, because of the inordinate amount of food trucks and equally inordinate amount of cameras packed around in a place that usually wouldn't get filmed.

We got off into a residential area, mistakenly believing that the GPS wanted us alive. We went over a heinously large bump in a residential area - it was so massive, in fact, that I think our axles will need psychiatric help. (This thing must have been half a foot down and back up.)

Eventually, painstakingly, we got to the Sox game in about the second inning. There was a bigger crowd there than I remotely expected for an Independent League game. The Sox were winning against the Winnipeg Goldeyes when we left after the sixth inning to get back before dark and its associates, the drunk drivers, set in. The Sox had everything sponsored, and since they had no large scoreboard, the PA announcer had to to the job. Every foul ball, every strikeout, every walk, and every hit had some sort of sponsor - and it got to be comical.

Some "vuvuzela" - long-tubed, obnoxious horns that sound like amplified air horns, a staple at soccer games - were present at this game. At every available opportunity, the vuvuzela players would belt out a honk, sometimes making them lethargic-sounding when their lungs tired out. It was 86 degrees, but windy and shady, so thus very nice. There were eccentric characters there - there was a man with a massive gray beard and headphones on, gesturing around to the folks in the front row. A man with a top hat and large facial hair was sitting near the aforementioned vuvuzela bearers. All in all, the fans were supportive of their Sox - and the man at the front desk of the hotel said that they're even more supportive of their minor league hockey team. Go figure.

I don't want everyone thinking that this carousing about the country is solely for baseball games and local food joints. While that's part of it, the real meat of the trip is the next leg. Tomorrow, we're getting to Carlsbad, New Mexico, and the Mountain Time Zone. After that, we'll see Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands National Monument, the Petrified Forest, and then the Grand Canyon. After that come Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, Salt Lake City, and finally, San Francisco.