Oklahoma Museums

We spent several days with friends in Fayetteville. Around lots of talking and catching up, with their help we completed a bunch of errand and small repairs. Now we’re in Oklahoma City. The first place we visited was the Oklahoma City Memorial as a remembrance of the bombing of in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995. The bombing killed 168 people including many children who were in a day care in the building. The memorial has an infinity pool along with bronze, stone, and glass chairs with the names of those who died listed on each one.

Red Earth Museum & Gallery isn’t a big museum, but there is always something to learn.  The story that goes with this totem pole is interesting. The philanthropist, Fred Jones, had planned to fly to Alaska. His wife had a premonition of danger and asked him to cancel his trip. The flight went on without him and crashed killing his friend Oklahoma icon Will Rogers.

My favorite museum of all time is the Museum of Osteotomy (or just the bone museum). It is just fascinating to see the bones of all these different animals. The museum shows you groups of similar animals together like these antelope, gazelle, and cattle. Loved the horns. Some look like hairdo’s while others are corkscrews.

Apes…

Some displays gave interesting facts. From one of their signs “Elephant skulls are massive with a large nasal opening sinking deep into the skull. Due to their strange appearance, these skulls were once the source for the legend of the mythical Cyclops.”

If you click on this picture you can read the sign. I’m not repeating it here.

Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History was our last museum and by far the biggest. It’s one of those museums that are so big that it’s a bit too much. There were many things fossil creatures I didn’t know existed plus lots of creepy dead animals in jars. The skull of this Pentaceratops is the largest land vertebrate skull in the world.