Don't you just love fall? My family just got back from a trip (actually outside of Oklahoma this time) and the delightful fall weather welcomed us home. Our first weekend back, we headed out to the pumpkin patch - one of our favorite autumn traditions.

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We took the family to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum recently.

I had been to the Memorial several times, but not the museum. The admission price of $10 for adults and $6 for children always seemed a little high to me. For our family, that's $32, and that's just because the baby doesn't need a ticket to get in.

But I had been to the outside area, several times, so I knew what to expect.

We came on a Saturday, which apparently means free parking downtown. The meters say it's free on Sundays only, so we fed the meter before someone wandered by and mentioned in passing that it was free the whole weekend. We were out of change anyway, so we took a chance and didn't get a ticket.

The Memorial is such a quiet, serene place. Everyone is so introspective. It means different things to everyone, but it all revolves around what happened on April 19, 1995.

The first thing we saw was the fence. The fence is part of the fence that was installed shortly after the bombing to protect the site. People from all over (myself included) left items on the fence in the aftermath, and although it was not originally part of the plan for the memorial, planners later decided to keep a portion of the fence. A booklet from the memorial refers to the fence as America's sympathy card.

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We hit the State Fair last night, Okie Tourist style, with stroller and bags and all the things it seems to take to make a family outing complete.

We tried to do it on the cheap, although we spent $21 on corndogs, lemonade and chicken-on-a-stick to feed our family of 5. Not bad. Of course, some of our people are still very small. Your family might require more than a $3 corn dog for dinner. Alternately, your family might be more vocal about their demands for a more filling meal. Ours are still pretty distractable.

We were at the fair for about five hours, and we probably didn't do a third of all we would have liked to. We're going back on Wednesday (our oldest two kids are performing at the bandshell) and so we have plans to hit a few more things then.

Here's what we did, what we didn't do, and what we're planning to do.

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We just got back from the state fair and I am ready to write!

But first, we drew the names of the State Fair contest winners. Three lucky Okie Tourist readers will get four tickets each to go and enjoy the state fair themselves! One winner came from okietourist.com; the other two came from our Facebook page. All three shared what they liked best about the fair.

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Hey! The Oklahoma State Fair starts tomorrow, and The Okie Tourist is your connection for free tickets! We're giving away three 4-packs of tickets! The drawing will be held on Friday, Sept. 18 - so you have plenty to time to enjoy the fair.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post, answering this question.

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