Heartland of America

West of Oklahoma City, you’ll cruise along miles and miles of prairie. This is the heartland of America.

Once just a vast of sea of tall grasses marked by a well-worn path of wagon ruts leading the traveler westward, the Great Plains were crossed by early settlers traveling in “prairie schooner wagons”—so called because they gave the allusion of white-topped schooners sailing on the sea.

Today, road-trippers can marvel at several I-40 over-sized icons that loom up out of the sea of green (both near Groom, TX):

•         World’s Largest Cross:
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•     The Leaning Water Tower—a Midwestern take on the leaning tower of Pisa.

Traveling west along I-40, you will see many Route 66 sites.

Ready for a stretch of the legs?            Snap a photo in Shamrock, TX, of the famous Route 66 U-Drop Inn (also called Tower Station).

Stope in McClean, TX, at The Devil’s Rope Museum, a fascinating collection of rancher brands, barbed-wire sculptures (cowboy hat, anyone?), and exhibits like the “Evolution of the American Cowboy.”