Today Ansel, myself, Laurie Kemp and her cousin Dee were headed to explore Oklahoma City
Dee lives in Stillwater, OK and on the way we stopped at her neighbor's house so that she could show us this mystery tree. They haven't 
been able to find out what kind of tree it is and she thought maybe Ansel might know what it is.
The mystery tree here is one nasty hombre and it is definitely not a kid friendly tree! These thorns are like 2-3" long and really hard. They are all over the trunk and all of the branches that are 2" in diameter or more. If you fell into this tree it would do some serious damage.
The tree here in this picture is a mystery, It's Dee's neighbors, and they haven't a clue what it is, other than it's pretty dangerous and ruthless. Anybody out there in blog reading land have any idea what it is???
Oklahoma Cowboy Hall of Fame
Our big excursion for the day was the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. It was amazing, beautiful grounds, gardens, fountains and many buildings. Fortunately Ansel had his electric scooter and that made it easier for him to see as much as possible. We spent five hours perusing the exhibits and didn't come close to seeing it all. As we looked at the exhibits, Ansel told us stories that each one would jog from his memory. He was especially intrigued with the Women of the West Exhibit. We were all ready to leave and he was 
getting his second wind. It was kind of cute seeing him get all perked up when he saw them. The women that were featured were mostly from the 30's to 60's. He seemed to know them all.
My head is spinning there were so many stories in one day. I took the digital recorder with me, and taped most of the them. I'll try to type some of them tomorrow for you. Tonight it's all I can do to get these pictures uploaded.
Oklahoma Murrah Federal Building Memorial Site
Next we went to the Oklahoma Federal building Memorial Site managed by the National Park Service in downtown Ok City. It was very surreal. I was very impressed with all of the symbolism thought out and put into each part of the memorial. It's so hard to believe that it's been 13-14 years since that happened.
The site is sub-street level, which provides a buffer and separation from the hustle and bustle of the city. You see a large reflecting pool, flanked on each end by a free standing wall. To the south is a large rectangle grassy area with chairs representing each life that was ended that fateful day. The south side grassy area perimeter represents the where the Murrah building was. On that grassy area, empty chairs face the reflecting pool. A simple chair crafted from bronze and copper sits atop an opaque glass bottom, there is one for each person who died that day inscribed with their name on it.
How appropriate to have an empty chair... any parent who has ever lost a child, knows what it's like to have that empty chair at their dinner table or at a holiday table that will never be filled again. There are 19 smaller chairs among the larger ones representing the 19 children that died in the blast. At night the glassed area is lit under each chair, illuminating and signifying hope. There are nine rows of chairs, signifying the nine floors of the building, and there are how ever many chairs in each row as the number who died from that floor. 
The free standing wall at the east end of the reflecting pool represents 9:01AM, when life was normal. The free standing wall at the west end 9:03AM, represents when lives were forever changed by the tragedy. There is one large elm tree to the north, (you can see it in the upper left of the picture below) it represents the survivors, and there are fruit trees planted around it signifying the rescuers and protectors of the survivors. 
There is a children's area, with a wall of tiles created by children expressing their sorrow, and they can still draw their thoughts in chalk on the walkway. I was very impressed and amazed and in awe.Then there is a whole building north of it, that is a museum to the event. We didn't have time to go through it, but reading the titles of the exhibits in the brochure sounded poignant.
