PRESENTING
The NATJA OKLAHOMA CONFERENCE GRAND PRIZE AWARD WINNER

• In 2008, the North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA) announced a new contest for attendees to enter. The writer who submitted to the host Convention and Visitor’s Bureau the best story about the host city would win a grand prize provided by the CVB.

  More than 20 stories were submitted to the Okahoma City Convention & Visitor’s Bureau who carefully read and judged all submissions. TravelWorld International Magazine is proud to reprint the winning article here for you to enjoy, written by NATJA member Christine Tibbetts. Congratulations, Christine!

Outside my familiar zone and into new realms. That’s good when it happens on a trip, especially to a place I’ve heard about all my life but never experienced. I expect newness in really far away places, or spots I never heard of, but I was mightily surprised by the depth and breadth of experiences in Oklahoma City on a five-day visit in June.

Guess I’ve known about it all my life, especially in the late ’60s when I lived next door in Missouri. Certainly felt the anguish when the federal building there was bombed.

Never chose to go to Oklahoma City until a conference plopped me right downtown in the Skirvin Hilton, a sumptuous property with changing moods on every floor and, despite the 14 floors, a small-enough lavish lobby to feel welcoming. Big showy lobbies overwhelm, as I suppose they are intended to do, but I liked the scale of this hotel, and the scale of the city.

Downtown walking works. You need a car or cab to some of the sites, but you can do a lot that’s pleasant right from the front door of city-center hotels. Great big handy maps posted on the sidewalks kept me straight, walking alone to get a feel of the place, and hunting dinner.

Bricktown offers good choices; I had a light-crust pizza for under $10 that first night at Zio’s and an outstanding pasta primavera with wood-grilled fresh vegetables for under $20 later in the week at Nonna’s. Plenty of prime rib, steaks and pork chops in restaurants throughout this red brick district too.

This used to be an industrial district, with lots of railroad activity; renovation in the 1990s to turn it into an entertainment hub held onto all those bricks, arched windows and decorative doorways. Tire of the bricks? Hop on the water taxi for a spin through the mile-long canal or cheer for the RedHawks at the minor league ballpark right in Bricktown.

Walking left from my hotel got me to Bricktown in two blocks; turning right and going just about the same distance offered three fine adventures: art museum, botanical gardens and national memorial.

For fans of blown glass and the works of Dale Chihuly in particular, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art is a must do. More of his works are permanently on display here than anywhere in the world. That includes the tallest—a 55-foot tower of orbs, spheres and colors in the front window, lighted at night. Two Finnish boats spill over with colorful, whimsical Chihuly shapes in a room of their own with a raised glass platform reflecting like water. I desperately wanted to sit quietly in the corner of that glass water, keeping my hands to myself and contemplating. The guards were attentive so that didn’t last long.

Why here? Might have something to do with Chihuly’s wife, Leslie Jackson, being an Oklahoma City native.

“Why here?” can be asked a lot around this city. I quit after a long string of interesting discoveries and began instead expecting the excellence.

Check out your heartbeat on the lawn of the National Memorial & Museum, where 168 handcrafted chairs represent the lives lost in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building; 19 are smaller for the children. You won’t want to speak, only feel. Listen a little if you like, because stories are well told dialing up some private listening on your cell phone.

Go twice, day and night, because the experience is powerful in different ways with the changing light. Go inside too. I got the message to remember those who were killed, those who survived and those changed forever, but I appreciated it in extra ways meeting local people volunteering here, like Sue Craig who said, “This is healing for me to come here.”

Oklahoma City people captured something valuable, and personal about the human spirit in the way they put this memorial and museum together. I sensed it, but was touched even more by low toned, occasional comments from a man walking next to me, a New Yorker. “Why haven’t we been able to do this for the people of the World Trade Towers?” he asked in numerous ways. “Why are we arguing about the plans in New York, and these Oklahoma people figured out what the city and its families needed, and what we who saw the news need?”

Best I can figure, that’s a reason to travel—to experience how others live and breathe and interact with one another.

The message is powerful in this place and it’s joyous, sometimes boisterous and certainly loads of fun at the Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. I didn’t really know I was a big western fan before I got here. Now I’m hooked. Stunning art, including Remington’s “Buffalo Signal” which is the only one ever cast, and Albert Bierstadt’s “Emigrants Crossing the Plains.” Too many rooms to count with exhibitions to suit all kinds of moods. Don’t love oil painting and sculpture as much as I do? No problem; hang out in the firearm collection.

Not as thrilled as I about the photos of women riding in rodeos? No problem; marvel at the room full of barbs and barbwire in unbelievable shapes with specific purposes for each. Love Western movies and actors more than I do? Immerse yourself in an entire section with film clips, memorabilia and interactive displays. I’ll be content in the gallery about functional, mechanical and decorative arts of this era.

The museum’s one-quarter cowboy, and three quarters western heritage, they say; best I could measure in an afternoon, there’s plenty for lingering more than a day.

Stay too long one good place and you miss another in Oklahoma City. The Paseo Arts District is a good walk-about, a little north of downtown, with 60 artists in 17 galleries, all in Spanish revival buildings of purple, terra cotta, yellow, pink and aqua, and tile roofs. The artists seem to live and work here so the mood is vibrant with mixed generations and loads of energy and creativity.

Energy is also in evidence on the seven miles of downtown water where long boats with eight rowers train, some in preparation for Olympic trials. They’re great fun to watch, from your own kayak, or the deck of a passenger boat on a 90-minute cruise through two locks. Depart from the Chesapeake Boathouse on the Oklahoma River, go to Meridian Landing at 15th Street and take the city trolley back. That’s a fun half-day. Plans are in the works to connect the river to the canals, the boats to the water taxis giving Oklahoma City yet another dimension to an already diverse and interesting personality.

When You Go:
Oklahoma City Convention & Visitors Bureau
800-225-5652
www.visitokc.com

National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
405-478-2250
www.nationalcowboymuseum.org

Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum
888-542-4673
www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org

Oklahoma City Museum of Art
405-236-3100
www.okcmoa.com

Oklahoma History Center
405-522-5248
www.okhistorycenter.org

Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge
www.fws.gov/southwest/refuges/
oklahoma/wichitamountains/
refhist.html

Christine Tibbetts is an award-winning NATJA travel writer and frequent TravelWorld International Magazine contributor. She is based in south Georgia, producing destination features on assignment for the Tifton GA Gazette and Community Newspaper Holding Inc. News Service. Most recently, she won an Outstanding Journalist award from Travel Media Showcase in Montgomery, Alabama. Tibbetts is a 1970 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism. When occasionally not traveling, she provides marketing and public relations services to political candidates, grows backyard vegetables, volunteers for Hospice, hikes in the woods and tries to stretch her yoga poses.