OOOOOOklahoma!!!!

On Monday, we headed west to Tulsa, Oklahoma. At Oklahoma City, the "West" officially starts. We weren’t sure how we would react to the west....cowboys, cattle, and that whole Western mentality. We spent a night in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was actually quite a lovely city. Somehow, I had expected hokie Okie-land- with hicks and cowboys. But, it was quite lovely and more sophisticated than we thought. Although, our trip to Oral Robert University was a trip. Oral Roberts making huge bucks pushing evangelical Christianity through the tellie. He has a university that looks a bit like "the Jetsons meet Jesus". The buildings are all very futuristic- and most of them are gold. Quite bizarre.

From Tulsa, we headed to Oklahoma City. And yes, we were singing "Oklahoma" all the way down the road (it's the State Song!) The only problem is that we only knew a few stanzas- so it was mostly "OOOOOOOOOOklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plains and the la-la-la, la-la-la la...." Since we took Route 66 between the cities, we also did a bit of "get your kicks on Route 66..."

It was strange to see a city so defined by a disaster-- the main tourist attraction in town was the site of the Oklahoma City (OKC) Bombing in 1995. The building was razed and they've put up a very moving memorial and museum. We explored the city- visiting Bricktown, their downtown building renovation project, and Stockyard City.