On the Road Again.. Year 3.. Headed North

This is the third summer that we have taken to the road for an extended vacation.  We are old hands at this now, right?  Well, in some ways we feel quite experienced, but life always throws things at you….it’s part of the adventure.  We planned to leave on Monday, but a routine check of the satellite dish found that the receiver was dead.  A new one was delivered by UPS on Wednesday.  We were off the next morning, but not too early.  Oklahoma City was our destination, and it’s only a few hours away.

Thursday night we made our way to the Mule, an unusual restaurant recommended by Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.  The fried Watonga cheese curds with Ranch were to die for!  We could only eat half our sandwiches after filling up on cheese curds.  Although we had never heard of it before, you can order Watonga cheese curds from the Watonga Cheese Company, now located in Perryton, TX.   WooHoo!

We lived in Oklahoma City for three years shortly after we were married.   A lot has changed in the forty years since we left there!  Friday morning we went to the Oklahoma capitol.  There is an oil derrick and several oil tanks right in front of the building. 

Oklahoma Capitol

The grounds were lovely, with a green lawn, big trees and landscaping.  Although the original plans for the capitol (1914) called for three stories and a dome, the governor at the time thought a dome was pretentious and he wanted six floors.  Since the legislature wouldn’t cooperate, he spent the $1.5M budget on six floors and had no funds for the dome.  In 2000 Governor Frank Keating proposed to build a dome on the capitol in advance of the state centennial in 2007.  The budget was $21M, and all but a few million was paid for with donations of citizens and corporations.  It was finished in 2002 and is quite beautiful.   Our tour guide was great - knowledgeable and interesting.

"End of the Trail" at National Cowboy
and Western Heritage Museum

After a great hamburger and French fries at Bricktown Burgers, we let the dogs out for a bit and headed to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  This is a fabulous site, with beautiful paintings, sculptures, castings, and other works of Western art.  Well worth the two hours we spent there.

Oklahoma City National Memorial

Oklahoma City National Memorial

  We got up early on Saturday morning to go the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.  We spend almost four hours there.  The museum was very well done, with many types of media – pictures, posters, recordings, interviews, and artifacts.  It was very thorough, laid out sequentially and covered everything from the origins of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building and to the trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.  The memorial, with empty chairs for each of the 168 victims facing the reflecting pool where NW 5^th Street once ran, was serene and peaceful.  It was a very moving experience.  I came away with both a terrible sense of sadness for the victims and great pride in the people of Oklahoma and those from around the country who worked so hard to respond to the event.

Saturday evening we went to Ted’s Café Escondido, a fabulous Mexican restaurant.  We highly recommend it!