Oklahoma City

Chris and I decided that we would have a “staycation” this past Memorial Day weekend and headed to Oklahoma City. I’ve always wanted to see the Memorial and to do that on the holiday weekend just felt patriotic. So we hopped in the car and drove north. Three hours later we pulled into The Skirvin Hotel (terrible name, awesome hotel) in downtown OKC. After checking in, we walked a few blocks to the Memorial for the Oklahoma City Bombing.


It wasn’t very crowded, being a Sunday afternoon on a holiday weekend. We spent 4 hours walking thru the inside and outside. I was a senior in high school when it happened in 1995, and being that age I remember feeling removed from it. After having gone I think it’s something every American should do. It’s so tastefully done, thoughtful and moving. The tour moves from room to room as you experience that entire day from 9am thru the following weeks, and ending with interviews of survivors and families years later. The fact that with a daycare inside 19 babies were killed will forever, to me, make it worse than 911. Killing children takes things to a whole new level.
We wandered the reflection pool. On one end the metal structure shows 9:01, and on the other 9:03. The reflection pool in the middle with all the chairs showing that life changed in the 1 min in between.

We looked at the chairs, 168, lining 9 rows representing the floors they died on. Little chairs for kids, big chairs for adults. All had flags flying for Memorial Day as well. It was so quiet and peaceful.


We decided to go to Bricktown for dinner, an area they created in downtown with a canal similar to San Antonio. It’s lined with restaurants, bars, starbucks, a movie theater and right in the middle is a ball park. The Big 12 Championship Tournament was that weekend, and I’m happy to say that UT won, but the area was filled with Big 12 fans. We had drinks after dinner at the Melting Pot and called it a day.

The next morning we checked out, and took our time going home. We stopped in a casino for some slot play, and then had lunch at a diner we saw. The hot dog I ordered was well over 1 foot in length! It was nuts. We also had to get a DQ blizzard of course. It was a great weekend with beautiful weather and I can check the Memorial off my bucket list