Oklahoma City

Oklahoma City - Note for Travelers:

I had occasion to visit Oklahoma City last weekend, and saw two things worth mentioning in this Hall.

Something to see: the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. I cannot too highly recommend this. I have never seen a musem so well balanced for a family visit. We didn't enter the children's exhibit (which had a building all to itself), but we did see the rest of it. Mrs. W. especially liked the western art gallery - I liked best the rooms dedicated to postbellum military life and ranching history, but thanks to Grim's posts, I didn't neglect the section dedicated to Western movies, and prominent actors and stuntmen. I have an idea that some of our regular visitors would simply take the whole family to the arms collection (which is half Colt, half "everyone else") and spend a few hours there.

Something not to see: the Oklahoma City memorial. As you likely know, this is dedicated to the Oklahoma City bombing. You can see large displays of the timeline, and hear a recording of a water board meeting that was taking place at the time of the explosion, and you can see collected items from the rubble (including a box of children's shoes). However, as the lady at the front desk explained, they didn't want to focus on "him", so you won't actually hear anything about the perpetrator, not even his name, nor learn his fate. The missus noticed a large group of schoolchildren there, and cogently asked, exactly what lesson were they going to take away from this? That dying in a terrorist attack is sad?