A State at a Time: Oklahoma - Day 14 - Oklahoma City - DRAFT

El Reno KOA, Geary
Friday, 14 August 2020

today's route, with close-up below

I didn't get to most of the city, clearly

The drive east
I saw a sign telling me about the website Okie Weed Finder (.com) to help locate medical marijuana dispensaries. Am I just cynical or am I the only one who's skeptical about the vast number of places people can buy marijuana legally for "medical" conditions? Considering how very many of them I've seen just driving around, can there really and truly be that much illness and pain in this state? Whatever happened to the suck-it-up and grin-and-bear-it attitudes of the wild west?

When I got gasoline at the Cherokee Trading Post, I saw a sign that said "CWY" which I'd seen before. So I asked inside about it and was told that means something in the Cherokee language, though they didn't know what. So now I know a tiny bit more than I did.

Just before the Oklahoma City limits I passed a sign saying Leaving Cheyenne-Arapaho Nation. Even after the city limits sign I saw miles and miles of farmland. I guess OKC is planning ahead.

I passed Red Dirt Orthodontics. Picturesque name, but I'm not sure that's where I'd want to go for braces.

I passed the turn for Garth Brooks Blvd, which is one of the main streets in Yukon, an OKC suburb. He was born in Tulsa but spent his childhood here, so the town wanted to honor him. His high school yearbook has a photo of him making kolaches for the annual Czech Festival. That festival, by the way, seems to be a big deal, held the first Saturday in October each year - except not this year because of the virus. It sounds like your typical small town party with a parade and food and polka bands and folk dancing during the day, with the Royal Coronation Ball at night (for the Queen, Junior Queen, Prince and Princess). I'm sure a good time is had by all.

A sign I saw driving into town told me OKC is a training site for Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

Seeing the sights
I had several specific sights I wanted to see in Oklahoma City, but as it turned out, even though I left just after 8 AM, I still ran out of time. But what I saw was interesting.

In trying to find a parking place so I could walk the dogs and take photos of the Capitol, I stumbled on a very nice War Memorial on the grounds of the state Supreme Court.

Oklahoma War Memorial

WWI

WWII

Korean War

Vietnam War (obscured by sunlight)

There were many of these lists of
names, but this part surprised me because
of all the armed conflicts it included.

an eternal flame

a special memorial to the crew of the
USS Oklahoma, sunk at Pearl Harbor in WWII

Sgt. Mike Mullings

"He was truly a 'big guy.'"

I thought this memorial was touching and wondered why this particular soldier had been singled out. I found the answer at this link. https://www.news9.com/founder-of-veterans-memorial

Oklahoma State Capitol
When I turned around from the memorial, I was right across the street from the Capitol.

This building was completed in 1917 except, due to cost overruns (not a modern occurrence) they didn't add the dome that was in the plans. The dome was added in 2002.

This statue is at the top of the dome, but I can't easily find the answer to whether this is a particular person and, if so, who and, in either case, why he was chosen for the top of the capitol. But it's a nice looking piece of sculpture.

Oklahoma is the only state in the Union to have an operating oil well on the grounds. The capitol sits smack on top of the Oklahoma City Oil Field, one of the world's largest, and oil's been pumped out of it since 1928.

I think this derrick is just for show because this doesn't look like it's operational for anything.

The capitol is on a circle, with the Supreme Court building and war memorial on one side and, on another side, the state history museum, which is where I went next.

Oklahoma History Center
My impression of this museum is that they have limited space and have too much information for the space they have. Plus, they used some of their space for exhibits that were meaningless to me, an outsider. Maybe they were significant to an Oklahoman, but they didn't explain why. I mean, I understand why they devoted some space to the musical Oklahoma! which was in many ways a home-grown product. But they devoted about a third of a floor to an exhibit for the Steamboat Heroine. In 1838, this boat was plying the Red River to deliver supplies and passengers to Ft. Towson. The boat sank, the supplies were lost, but all the passengers were saved. Sorry, but I just don't see why that got almost as much space as the gallery on the Indians in Oklahoma.

* Crossroads of Commerce - Half of one floor was devoted to "a history of free enterprise in Oklahoma." Unfortunately, quite a few of my photos came out fuzzy - I think because I couldn't use a flash and there were low light levels in the museum, so the shutter was slower than usual and I moved. I've cut out many of my photos for lack of legibility.

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