Got out of the hotel at about 9:30 this morning and back tracked a little to hit a spot that was closed yesterday: The J.M Davis Arms and Historical Museum. This place has to have the largest collection of weapons I have ever seen under one roof. Everything from a Chinese hand cannon to modern tactical weapons is represented at the museum. Some of the more interesting weapons we saw were a 20mm anti-tank rifle (the huge ‘sniper rifle’ I’m standing in front of in one of the pictures below), Billy the Kid’s Colt, several 8 gauge shotguns, a Bazooka, a couple of knives with barrels attached (kind of like a reverse bayonette), and an 8-foot wall gun chambered for .87 Caliber.

The museum wasn’t all about weapons, though, and had a number of historical artifacts, including some cools steins, lots of musical instruments, and what appears to the the precursor to the baseball:

After leaving the museum we headed out to the Beacon Drive-In which is the theater actually depicted in this scene from “Twister”:

We got a shot or two of the GT500 in front of it, but since it was closed, we couldn’t drive any closer. Of course, thus far we haven’t let rules really stop us, so Beth jumped the fence to get some shots from inside. Unfortunately, she was a bit disappointed because there really wasn’t much to shoot without a tornado inbound.

After the beacon we went into Oklahoma City for lunch. There we stopped at Whiskey Cake, which is a bit of weirdly named restaurant that prides itself on ‘farm to plate’ food. Their menu is kind of eclectic, so Beth and I got a little adventurous. We started off with the deviled eggs, which had pulled pork added to them. I thought these were ok, but deviled eggs really aren’t my thing. Beth, on the other hand, loved them, and ate most of them.

After that, Beth ordered the turkey burger and found it reminiscent of the turkey sandwich named for the air force at a legendary little sandwich shop in Monterey, which is pretty high praise. I had the pork brisket as well as the pulled pork ramen. The pork brisket had a very interesting and unique flavor. The brisket itself was on top of a bed of cheese grits with peppers in them, and while the grits and brisket were both very good alone, the combination elevated them both.

The ramen is a collection of flavors I never would have thought of, but was excellent. Basically, it was very well prepared traditional ramen noodles in a pork and slightly soy-tasting base, with large chunks of well seasoned pork belly and pulled pork.

After the entrées, we had dessert where Beth and I both ordered the signature dish, Whiskey Cake. I’m not sure what was in it, because I didn’t pay much attention, but what I can tell you is that this is the best desert I have had on the entire trip. Even more, I now understand why they named the restaurant after it. Beth could only eat about a third of hers and generously let me eat the rest of it.

Bellies full, we hopped back in the GT500 and made our way towards the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum. On the one hand, this museum was a bit of a disappointment, as I really expected it to have more cars. However, the museum is really about the route itself, not cars, and from that perspective it was very educational. However, it’s tiny, and the entry fee is way out of proportion at $10 per head. To put this into perspective, this is the same fee as the customary donation (optional) to enter the J.M Davis Arms Museum, and a gun nut could easily spend all day there. You’d be hard pressed to spend an hour at the Route 66 museum no matter how hard core you are.

Once we were done in the museum, we hopped back in the car and made our way towards Amarillo for dinner and bedding down.

This is against one of my ‘trip rules’, but I decided to eat at the same restaurant that we ate at the last time we were in Amarillo. I did this because there are really only three types of food that are local to this part of Texas: BBQ, Steak and Tex-Mex. Beth has a hyper-sensitivity to spicy food so Tex-Mex was really out, and we’ve both had enough BBQ to last us quite a while, so the only thing left was steak. Furthermore, Embers was either the second or third best restaurant we ate ay on the way out. Our food was excellent last time,  so I was kind of looking forward to going back.

All I can say is Embers didn’t disappoint. We started out with a salad for Beth and a bowl of jalapeno and potato soup for me that was as tasty as anything I’ve ate yet.

I followed that with a 16 oz prime rib covered in blue cheese and truffle butter, while Beth had an 8 oz prime rib with truffle butter. For sides, Beth had a baked potato, while I had the Mac & Chees with green peppers.

Finally, desert, which was a Chocolate Delight for Beth and Apple Pie a la Mode for me. For reference, this is the biggest ‘piece’ of apple pie and ‘scoop’ of ice cream I’ve ever had. The ‘slice’ is basically 1/3 of a pie, and the ‘scoop’ was actually two scoops, each about 1 cup in size.

Overall, it was a very good day, even though we had to skip a number of spots due to time. Tomorrow we should get close to Denver and see several sights in that area.