I’m back from vacation! My husband and I drove to Austin, Texas. Initially, I was going to schedule posts to release while I was out, but I ended up scrapping that idea and taking a week off instead. Similar to other vacation posts, I’m going to write three posts that summarize my trip. The first post is dedicated to a city we stopped in, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Leaving from Minneapolis, the fastest driving route to Austin is to cut through Oklahoma. You may be thinking, “Why would you want to visit Oklahoma?” Oklahoma, like many states in the US, has the stereotype of being a “fly-over state”. As someone who eventually wants to visit all the US states, I was excited to cross off Oklahoma from my list. Whatever expectations I had about Oklahoma, I was pleasantly surprised. Oklahoma City (abbreviated OKC) was a city where I had a great time exploring.

One of the first things we did was visit the Wheeler Ferris Wheel. The Wheeler Ferris Wheel was the original Santa Monica Pier Ferris Wheel. It was purchased and now resides in a park outside of downtown OKC. The Wheeler district was neat. There was a full park with numerous trails on the border of the Oklahoma River. The area was in a warehouse district with a full view of the OKC skyline. The Wheeler district reminded me of northeast Minneapolis, which is our artsy area of the city.

Besides taking pictures at the Wheeler Ferris Wheel, we walked around the Oklahoma City National Memorial. For those who are unfamiliar, on April 19th, 1995, a bomb went off at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in OKC. I wasn’t even a year old when this happened. I’m learning as an adult what happened that day and how horrific this event was. The memorial was beautifully crafted, but haunting. Several chair sculptures represented everyone who died that day. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to go through the museum, but if I’m ever back in OKC, I will make this a priority.

That’s OKC! I was not expecting to love OKC as much as I did. There’s a lot of history here, and local businesses to support. Sometime next week, I will post my Austin, Texas travel recap.