Nothing can compare to the feeling of the morning breeze along the beach, the touch of the sand crawling up your feet, the sound of the gulls in the distance, and the romantic sunsets. It is precisely, this spiritual experience that makes the shores, some of the most attractive places to live, visit, and rest out the finals days. In the United States, it has always been about the West Coast vs. East Coast. And In between: Chicago, The Dallas Cowboys, The Colorado Rockies and marijuana dispensaries, The Grand Canyon, and UFOs in Roswell. For us, somewhere in the middle, in the crossings of I-40 and I-35, there lays a very special place for us, a place we call home, Oklahoma.
Oklahoma is often synonym of the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. A domestic terrorist truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Downtown, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the United States on April 19, 1995. Carried out by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the bombing destroyed one-third of the building, killed 168 people, and injured more than 680 others. (USA Today. Associated Press. June 20, 2001)
For this blog entry, we chose simplicity. The iconic route 66 would have been the obvious choice. But people have been there and done that. So instead, we headed down the forgotten red dirt roads of Oklahoma; to show you an often-forgotten view of the Sooner state. There are thousands of magnificent places to visit in Oklahoma. If you’d like to learn about everything Oklahoma has to offer, visit: www.travelok.com
Let us be perfectly honest, there are not transparent crystal clear beaches in Oklahoma, but there is something unique and magical hidden within the sun-rises in the red dirt roads, that has the power to elevate people to one of the calmest places on Earth.
The sights that we discovered in the backroads of Oklahoma were unique. For this one, we’ll let the photos narrate this adventure for themselves. At the moment, Oklahoma is plagued with a series of problems. Teachers fleeing the state for better-paying opportunities, overcrowded prisons, and a budget crisis that has put the state in peril.
The last time we were asked to described Oklahoma, we were exploring a poverty-stricken neighborhood in Managua, Nicaragua. We described it as the greatest state in the union, the state that had given us everything, the state that welcomed us when no one else would.
Did we lie when we described a state that often ranks towards the bottom of most economic and progress-based rankings? We do not believe so. We side with former Shawnee Chief Tecumseh:
“When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.”
We have many things to thank Oklahoma for, and based on that, within our hearts, Oklahoma will always be at the top.
We refuse to categorize the possible as impossible. Perhaps we are too optimistic, but if we were pessimistic, the fault would lie on ourselves. In a way, imagination is its own form of courage.
"Victims of the Oklahoma City bombing". USA Today. Associated Press. June 20, 2001. Archived from the original on February 27, 2011.
TravelOK.com Homepage | TravelOK.com - Oklahoma's Official ... (n.d.). Retrieved April 28, 2017,