Oklahoma!?!

Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain . . .

Are you humming yet? Can you just hear the words to this song in your head, painting a picture of the state? And since most of us have heard this song does it make you wonder just a little bit about the state when you hear it? Yea, I know me neither. But . . .

I've seen graffiti before on stop signs, but we knew we were in Oklahoma, when we saw this sign.

There was a water retention pond just outside our hotel, the first morning we were there these two greeted me as I walked the poopies.

This is what I think of when I think of Oklahoma.

 I'll bet you're asking yourself, why on earth am I in this place to begin with. Simple answer: my daughter had vehicle problems and we were called upon to come to the rescue. And all of this occurred over the Easter weekend and the Monday and Tuesday after. Our mission was to get her back to college, determine the problem, fix the problem, spend a little more time with her and allow me some time for exploring, A pretty tall order.

So here's the Oklahoma mini tour for you with pictures to go along with it. First we started in Shawnee a mid-sized city of about 30,000 people with two universities that sits between OU and OSU and about 30 miles east of Oklahoma City on I-40. A quaint little place with to be honest a couple of great places to eat, a few standard chain hotels to stay in and several casinos all around to keep you occupied. To be quite honest, there isn't much else in this little town.  We came here because this is where our daughter goes to school. 

So that being said if you're here some day as you drive thru on I-40 around lunchtime, then you should stop and eat at DC Cake Appeal for lunch.  A combination deli and bakery with one of the best soup and salad bars I've had in a long while. Everything was fresh, not alot of canned/frozen items. For example there was freshly shaved parmesan cheese, spring greens, grilled chicken pieces, fresh snow peas, dried cranberries and this kind of list goes on and on. Soup choices on the day we visited were chili, chicken and dumplings and tomatoe basil. I sampled all of them and they were excellent. And the desserts, were wow! So many choices, from fresh home made cheesecake to cupcakes to cookies to brownies. When I explained to one of the owners that I was on a diet, her response was classic "I'm not about to lose any weight anytime soon. I payed a whole lot to get like this!" I have too!

One thing that I found that was quirky and fun was a public art project for the city. The project is called Horse in the City and is comprised of life sized statues of horses in three basic poses of grazing, rearing and standing. The horses are placed all over town mostly outdoors in completely accessible spots for the public to view. These are multi-media projects that are intriguing and fascinating. Showing both the intent of the sponsor and artist who worked together to produce these statues. 

To the Stars

Hole in 1

Surprise Finish

Beaded Pony is the name of this one. All done with paint, not jewels or beads.

Oklahoma Scissortail

Warhorse is this one.

Freedom

The run depicts the white man's settlement of Oklahoma

Mola. And no I have no idea what that means.

American Classics.

100 year horse

Evening Star.

There are five casinos in and around Shawnee. All of the  casinos in Oklahoma are owned and operated by tribal governments and are on reservation property. Two of the ones near Shawnee are owned and operated by the Citizen Potawatomi Nation (CPN) tribal government. They are the Firelake and Firelake Grand Casino, the other three owned by different tribal governments are Kickapoo, Sac & Fox and Thunderbird Casino. The Firelake Grand has several restaurants inside as well as accomodations on site. That is the only one that I visited, as I'm not much of a gambler (at least in terms of casinos.)
Now since we are done gambling and exploring in the small town, let's move on to the capital and largest city of Oklahoma. Locally called just "the city" or OKC we visited two different must see places. The first was the Oklahoma City Memorial. If you were around back in 1995, then you know that this memorial commemorates the bombing of the federal building where 168 lives were claimed including 19 children under the age of 6. The sight of the building has since been made into the memorial and the street in front of where the buidling stood is now a reflecting pool and at either end of the pool marking the dimensions of the building itself are the "Gates of Time" marked with the moment before the attack on one end and the moment of the attack at the other end. Where the Murrah building stood now stand the empty chairs in nine rows for each of the floors of the building representing a victim. There are also 16 smaller chairs that represent the children whose young lives were ended that day. This was one that actually gave me chills. When you see the sight, look at the empty chairs that represent someone who will died that day especially the little chairs and finally look over at the charred and scarred remains of one wall from the building you can not help but be moved. If I was like this here I would hate to see what I'd be like in New York at ground zero.

The empty chairs that represent the victims.

9 rows of chairs

The survivor tree, burned in the bombing put it survived however the bark is permanently stained black.

Written by a rescue worker on the newspaper building across the street

The moment before

For the children

The moment after

Reflecting pool

I remember you, and I will never forget.

Chapel across the street.

This was in the chapel from the previous picture.

What was the newspaper building

True, so very true.

From there we went to the Botanical Gardens. They were closed down for a time back in 2010 for renovations and improvements. And I have to say they were great to see now after the improvements. I heartily recommend the gardens as they were beautiful. We were there very close to closing time so not as many pictures as I'd have liked but I hope you get the idea.