Take a spin at Oklahoma casinos

It's Sunday morning, 10:40, and Marilyn Monroe is primping in the ladies room of the Riverwind Casino. She freshens her lipstick, tugs her wig straight and ensures that her white halter dress covers everything it should before stepping out and vanishing into the cacophony of the casino floor.

Norman, Okla., has its own glamour. OK, Vegas it ain't. But Oklahoma is fourth in the nation in tribal gaming revenue, and my husband and I had a swell weekend supporting that economy. We hit old-school casinos, the WinStar and Thunderbird, and slick new-generation casinos, Riverwind (where Marilyn was part of a promotional event) and FireLake Grand in Shawnee.

Tom played electronic games and craps, while I was seduced by an electronic game called Crazy Catz that I'm sure I could beat with more time and nickels. We drank cocktails and ate unhealthy food and agreed that what happens in Norman stays in Norman.

All this and a road trip, too.
Interstate 35 heading north from Dallas is not (yet) a corridor of shopping centers and construction. The drive offers expansive green vistas where the wind comes sweeping down the plains. And there's stuff to do if you're in no big hurry.

Our trip from Norman to Shawnee took us through Oklahoma City, where we stopped at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum to pay our respects to the victims of the April 1995 bombing. We lucked into an air show at Tinker Air Force Base (our first clue was when a Stealth bomber flew over the highway) and joined locals in a shopping center parking lot to watch loop-the-loops and death spins and a re-enactment of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

And en route home, something about Ponder's restaurant, right off the highway in Ardmore, called us. We took a gamble and hit the jackpot with a late breakfast of fresh coffee and eggs, plump bacon and fried quail, of all things.

Road-trip luck was with us even if casino luck wasn't. ("At least ya still got yer britches," a friendly fellow in the Riverwind parking lot said on Sunday morning.) But the weekend was worth every penny, nickel and quarter. (OK, some dollars, too.)