The Rock Cafe is the kind of place that made Rout 66 famous.

The Stroud, Oklahoma, restaurant has been a fixture of the Mother Road for decades. Even though Route 66 has been long decommissioned as a national highway, there are some 350 intact miles of it running through Oklahoma, and many of the classic restaurants and attractions that became popular with travelers along the old road can still be visited.

Rock Cafe is one such place. The restaurant is frequented by both locals and tourists, who come from far and wide to eat here. Several years ago, a crew from the Pixar movie studio stopped by the cafe for a meal during a trip to research their animated movie Cars.  The producers were so taken with the Rock Cafe and its owner Dawn Welch (pictured below) that they returned many times, and based the movie character Sally on Dawn and her family business. A couple of years ago, Food Network personality Guy Fieri visited to feature Rock Cafe on his hit show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.

The restaurant has earned its fame over decades, but recently almost lost everything overnight. In spring of 2008, a fire originating in the kitchen extensively damaged the restaurant, forcing Dawn and her family to close down for more than a year to rebuild the business that has been central to their lives.

In May, the Rock Cafe reopened, with a brand-new, expanded dining room, but the same eclectic menu. Diners can come for chicken-fried steak, a shrimp po-boy or German-inspired schnitzel. When she knows that groups are coming, Dawn will make her way out of the kitchen and share the Rock Cafe story with her visitors.

It's places like the Rock Cafe and people like Dawn that make Route 66 such a loveable, memorable part of our American heritage... even if it only lives on in song. 

Is there anybody today like Will Rogers? Will there ever be?

Will Rogers is a name I've heard before. But until I visited his boyhood home, as well as the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, Oklahoma, I had no idea how significant this man really was: An entertainer, a writer, a philosopher, a cowboy, a world traveler -- an everyman at the turn of the century, someone that nearly every man could relate to.

Rogers was born here in Oklahoma on a Ranch not far from Claremore. His birthplace home (pictured above) has been preserved, and today visitors can walk through and see the house as it likely would have looked during Will's childhood there. The working ranch also has cattle, chickens, a peacock and other animals that Will's family raised.

At the memorial museum in Claremore, the stature of this man comes more clearly into view. Exhibits show the breadth of the man's talent, and his influence on the American people. He starred in dozens of movies, and wrote a daily newspaper column that was at one time run by every major daily paper in the United States. In his heyday, he was the most famous man in the world, and remains one of the most beloved everyman figures in American history.

Rogers died tragically early, now a generation ago. I left the museum today wondering how he will be remembered by young people who have never seen his films or columns, and who there is in today's world to take his place. Certainly no Hollywood celebrity, or sports superstar or political figure rises to his stature.  And in today's fractured world of celebrity tabloids and red-state/blue-state acrimony, I doubt that anyone ever will.

Will Rogers was one of a kind. And even though I was not alive to know his work firsthand, I am glad to have learned about such an extraordinary man.

It's amazing how much can change in one minute.

I was 13 years old when Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed in April of 1995. I remember hearing about it at school that day, and I remember feeling a strange distance between myself in Kentucky and the victims in Oklahoma. Now that I'm here, standing at the site itself, I am disconnected no longer.

It was one minute -- 9:02 a.m., specifically -- that change Oklahoma City and the rest of the country forever. Today, that moment in time is commemorated between two large "Gates of Time," one marked 9:01 and the other marked 9:03, at the Oklahoma City National Memorial. In between, a large reflecting pool symbolizes that one horric moment of violence.

There is no other memorial like this in the country, where every element is so symbolic, so visceral, and so moving. From the large Gates of Time (pictured above) to the field of empty chairs (pictured below) representing the victims killed in the attacks, this memorial brings the personal tragedy of that day to the forefront of my mind.

In the memorial's museum, displays and newsreels detail the attack and the massive recovery efforts that took place in the following days and weeks. The experience is enriching but chaotic, encouraging and yet sobering.

Outside, though, the scene is quiet and peaceful. There is something soothing in the reflecting pool, and something humanizing in these empty chairs. Between the gates, I stand symbolically at one moment in time that happened 14 years ago.

It's amazing how much can change in one minute.

If you've ever had a television or radio show interepted by a severe weather warning, the alert originated here: the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

Situated on the Oklahoma University campus, the National Weather Center is actually a conglomeration of a number of government, educational and commercial weather monitoring organizations. Here in the middle of the Oklahoma plains, the staff at the weather center and surrounding buildings monitors weather conditions across the country, and even on the high seas. Among the many facilities in this large, high-tech building is the Storm Prediction Center, a series of rooms outfitted with dozens of radar maps and computer monitors that experts use to keep track of potentially severe weather patterns.

"The Storm Prediction Center is the source of every severe storm watch or tornado watch in the country," said Kevin Kloesel, who guided me around the weather center today. "The ration of monitors to people in this building is about 10 to 1. We have about 550 people working here, and more than 5,000 monitors."

The center has much more storm-tracking equipment, as well. Kevin walked me through the vehicle bay, where storm chasing vans have been outfitted with instruments to follow the tornadoes that are common in this area of the country in late spring. We also saw a massive mobile radar truck (pictured above), which can be deployed around the region to capture low-altitude radar images that stationary units can't always detect.

When groups tour the weather center, they get to see many of these same areas, and learn about how the agencies working there take advantage of the work of Oklahoma University meteorology students, whose original research at the center has lead to significant forecasting breakthroughs. Other highlights include a 360-degree spherical projection screen (pictured below), where global weather radar images from the last 30 days are on a mesmerizing moving display.

Leaving the weather center today, I had a whole new appreciation for the innovation and the hard work that goes into forecasting the weather, and into warning people across the country about dangerous weather situations.