Saturday States: Oklahoma & Arkansas

Oklahoma

State Nickname: The Sooner State

Year of Family Trips: 1995 and 2006

Cities Visited: Ida and Oklahoma City

Our Stop: Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial

The first time we visited Oklahoma, it was a drive through visit.  We stopped in Ida for lunch before we continued on to Texas.  McKinley was such a youngster then.

In 2006, we spent a bit more time in Oklahoma at the capitol building and the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial.  The memorial is a beautiful tribute to those that lost their lives in such a senseless and tragic domestic terrorist act.  I love that each person is memorialized with his or her own chair.  The massive gates on each side of the reflecting pool are marked with bookend times making the memorial even more unique and somber.  Reading about The Survivor Tree, an elm that survived the wreckage, proved interested as well.

Arkansas

State Nickname: The Natural State

Year of Family Trip: 1995

City Visited: Hope

 Our Stop: Bill Clinton's Boyhood Home

Photo via Google Images

I distinctly remember walking through Bill Clinton's Boyhood Home when we visited Hope, Arkansas.  Parts of it actually reminded me a bit of the house I grew up in.  I remember joking with mom and dad that someday when McKinley was President, I'd set up shop running tours of our house.

We didn't really do much else in Arkansas, but we couldn't pass up a stop to see the largest watermelon ever!  Unfortunately, the photos we took can't be located, but a present day photo of the commemorative t-shirt I just had to have will do.

Have you been to either of these states?
What else did we miss here?

Andrea :)