Oklahoma!

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Surprise! We're in Oklahoma City, OK. That's the state's capital. The state bird is the scissor-tailed fly catcher. Now you know. It is the middle of the continent in the middle of July, so it is hot. Given the weather extremes the center of the country has been experiencing since spring, today was probably a perfect and beautiful day.

So, what are we doing here? The genesis of this trip was to meet an American Airlines-issued challenge to reach Platinum status. With 2 international flights scheduled this year already, we only needed one more trip over about 750 miles to hit AA's goals. We thought this trip would fill a doughnut hole on my TripAdvisor travel map. We flew into OKC and we'll drive through KS to Omaha, Nebraska to fly home. One small catch, I realized when I went to pin OKC that I have no pins in Arkansas either! Oh well. I'm also missing North Dakota, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont. I may have gone to Arkansas and Vermont as a child, but since I couldn't say where I haven't pinned them.

We got up at 3:30am today to make a 6am flight to DFW because you can't get directly from RDU to OKC. It was a 45 minute connection in Dallas which meant we walked straight off one plane and onto the next. It was only a 36 minute flight onto OKC.

We rented an economy car at the airport Avis. I guess because it was one way between airports, it is over $500 for a week. We got a Toyota Corolla, that is pretty beat up with under 30K on it. The AC works!

Our first stop leaving the Will Rogers Airport was the state capitol building for a photo op. It may have been open today but not Sunday morning. There was construction. It was good that we were here on a Sunday because traffic was light and we could find parking and it was free. I would guess everywhere, other than the airport, that we went today was within 8 miles of the capitol building. That was lucky because I am not at all certain that Clay understands how maps work. I think maps work by allowing you to see things in distance order so you can find places you'd like to go that are close together and keep traveling in one direction. Clay completely misses that. So, we've driven by the capitol building maybe 20 times today. The good news is that the car AC is excellent!

Next up was lunch. Clay has all our stops and meals 'mapped out'. Lunch was Indian Tacos at The Press. This is an OK specialty as far as we can tell and we really liked it. It was a good choice at a busy local brunch spot. The lunches were $10 each and filled us up. We weren't offered dessert which was just as well since we wanted ice cream. Clay didn't have this planned. So we could have just walked to Roxy's Ice Cream Social, another local treat.

We had purchased 2pm tickets online to visit the Van Gogh, Monet, Degas exhibit for $15 each. We planned to visit the Chihuly collection at the Art Museum around that timed entry. Neither collection disappointed.

Next up a quick visit to the OKC Memorial. This was the site of I guess the worst act of domestic terrorism in the US. A bomb destroyed the federal building here. I usually make a point of not visiting tragic sights when traveling but there are always exceptions. We compromised here and only visited the outdoor memorial and not the museum.

By now we were flagging, and we drove out of the center of town and checking into our cheap accommodations for tonight, the Sleep Inn. I think we booked a prepaid rate of under $70 for the night. It is a Choice Hotel and I think we are mostly using those properties for this week's trip. We used a Choice Property for the Land of Oz trip too. The downside. Choice has this stupid thing with 5 small square bed pillows! Clay takes 2 and leaves me 3 but you can't sleep with 3 small pillows. I can't anyway. I want one firm rectangle of a pillow that I don't have to herd all night long. I am so tired tonight that hopefully it won't be a problem. After an afternoon rest, we headed back into town for dinner. Other than the pillows it is fine. We have a queen bed, fast strong wifi signal included, a fridge/microwave/coffee maker, 2 chairs, a desk and chair, a safe, a shower over tub. It is clean and quiet.

Clay picked Kitchen No. 324 for dinner. It was another good choice. We got there between 5 and 6 pm for dinner and it was nearly empty. Good for us. It was pricey compared to lunch. I had a $15 French Dip sandwich and Clay had a $14 salad. We shared our meals. It was filling and tasty.

We stopped at CVS on the way back and Clay got a supply of Coke Zero for the week and an ice cream bar that cost him a dime due to receiving $2 in CVS bucks for the first purchase. Lucky.

We plan to sleep in tomorrow since after breakfast our first visit is 10am at the OK Cowboy Museum. The one kink in that plan is that Clay went to bed at 7:30pm! We'll see.


Photos