Getting the flavor of...The other Oklahoma City

The other Oklahoma City

Oklahoma’s capital is not just the site of the “worst domestic terrorist attack in the nation’s history,” said Stephen Amidon in The Washington Post. Beyond that event’s moving memorial, Oklahoma City offers a variety of worthwhile attractions tied to happier claims to fame. In Bricktown, the city’s entertainment district, a water taxi runs along a canal system, offering a “good introduction” to such neighborhood attractions as the American Banjo Museum. To hear the red-dirt country music native to the region, stop in later at the Wormy Dog saloon. Nearby, the Paseo Arts D National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. istrict is a gallery hub, but you’ll have to venture a bit farther afield to see the “definitive collection of barbed wire” at theThe museum’s “glistening presentation of Old West values” offers “a fitting symbol for a city poised between gritty tradition and a more domesticated present.”

The pleasures of the Florida Panhandle

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A drive east across the coastline of the Florida Panhandle begins with “one of the most scenic roads in America,” said William Ecenbarger in The Philadelphia Inquirer. From historic Pensacola, the first 15 miles of Highway 399 cut through protected seashore, its pristine dunes “the color of snow.” The Panhandle’s 170-mile crescent of shoreline has always offered varied pleasures. “High-rise condos and polished resort communities give way to quaint fishing villages and pine forests teeming with wildlife.” At Grayton Beach, a 1,133-acre state preserve, the “rhythmic breathing” of the Gulf of Mexico is punctuated by nothing but the cacophony of “excited waterbird jabber.” At Eden Gardens State Park, you can rest on the porch of an 1895 mansion surrounded by oaks “bearded with Spanish moss.” Best of all, the area still has “some of the world’s most beautiful beaches,” and 2010’s oil spill did nothing to spoil them.