Oklahoma Trip- Day 5

After a day of looking at things Philip protested "not another museum!" when Julia suggested we hit up the Outsiders Museum in Tulsa on Friday.  But it's small and we stopped by an amazing park first!

I think the park is called the Gathering place and there was something for everyone there.

Cool play structures

Big slides

A whole system of bridges

Fish to feed

a water feature

And trails to walk

We had a great time there!

We stopped by the Cathedral too.

And then to the Outsiders museum.  (Philip did in fact survive another museum.)  It's just the house they filmed The Outsiders in, which is a little house in a 'hood in Tulsa.  The story is actually set in Tulsa and they have furnished it to look as much like the movie as they can.  They aren't actually associated with whoever made the movie, just fans who bought the house and turned it into a museum.  The poor neighbors have "no parking and no trespassing" signs in their yards because it's just a neighborhood and there's no parking lot or anything.

I saw the movie in 8th grade and all my kids read the book/saw the movie in 8th grade too so we were familiar with the plot.  It was worth the stop.  One of the people who owns it was an extra on the movie so he had some candid photos and experiences to share.  After that I was excited to read the book (I think my class only watched it and didn't read it for some reason) but then we borrowed the movie from the library and the plot was only okay.  I'm sure the book is better but my enthusiasm waned.

The most interesting thing the guide said was that he took lots of pictures of Matt Dillion and Rob Lowe but not many of Tom Cruise because Tom had a snaggletooth so the guide didn't think he'd amount to anything in Hollywood.  Turns out the snaggletooth was fake and Tom Cruise did amount to something.

We also ate at Whataburger at some point.  I'm not 100% sure it was this day but whatever.  The kids loved it and the manager gave all three of them free raspberry lemonades because that was their new drink coming out the next week.  Great advertising on her part, give the kids a drink they'll like so they come back when it's featured.  We just kept our mouths shut about being from a place with no Whataburger. 

We also stopped by this Route 66 gem. 

It's a huge whale some guy made that people used to go swimming off of.  No swimming in the gunky lake now but it's a good photo op.

We tried to enjoy smores at the Airbnb that night but the mosquitos chased us in.

The next morning we packed up and headed home.  It's amazing how fast 7 hours can go when you have bigger kids and no one throws up!!

Oklahoma Trip- Day 4

We headed into Oklahoma City again on day 4.  We stopped at the capital.

It wasn't totally finished until recently.  They put the dome on in the last, I don't know 10 years and finished the lower level too.  We noticed how much brighter it is than Nebraska's.  Ours is so dark downstairs.  The tour guide was really knowledgeable and there were tons of  artifacts.  He said once when he did a tour with a group of artists it took 4 hours to see everything.  Thankfully we were on the 1 hour tour.  I'm not that interested in Oklahoma history.  The kids were glad they weren't Oklahoma 4th graders.  That state has an "official" everything.  Official flower, official wild flower, official tree, official song, official gospel song, official animal, official wild animal, the list went on and on.

Then we went to the memorial for the bombing that happened in Oklahoma City in 1995.  It's not really a picture type of place.  It was well done and interesting but the whole second section was about the perpetrators and how they pulled it off.  I thought it was a little much.  They had details down to the actual getaway car on display.  I would have stayed focused on the victims and made the criminals more of an afterthought if I'd designed it.

Last for the day we stopped by the shrine for Stanley Rother.  He was a priest from the Oklahoma City diocese who spent most of his priesthood in Guatemala at the mission the diocese sponsored.  During the Civil war Guatemalan Catholics (and maybe all Christians, I've forgotten) were heavily persecuted and he was murdered in his rectory in 1981.  He is in the Blessed stage of canonization.

The grounds were beautiful too.  There was a huge replica of Tepeyac Hill, where Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared but we only saw it from a distance because the grounds were closing.

It was back to the airbnb for dinner and relaxing after that.

Oklahoma Trip- Day 3

We headed into Oklahoma City on day 3.  First stop the zoo.

It was a decent zoo and they had hyenas which I'd never seen in real life before.

We were trying to figure out why the honey badger was black and red instead of the black and white the Wild Kratts taught us about.  Then we figured it out...red dirt in Oklahoma made all the animals with white fur just a little red. 

Maps are hard when your resident map-reader is in Minden, NE.

It wasn't a huge zoo but we had a fun morning.

After the zoo we went to the cowboy museum.  There was much more history and looking at artifacts than I imagined a cowboy museum would have.  It was interesting though.

Outside was more hands on.

And pretty

Day 3 complete. 

Oklahoma Trip- Day 2

We drove from Kansas City to Tulsa Tuesday morning and made it in time to explore their Air and Space Museum.

There were lots of things to pretend to drive.

And some interesting things outside to look at, which I didn't take a lot of pictures of I guess.

After the museum we headed to the Airbnb, got the kids settled with some TV while Jeremy and I did the Aldi run.  Fun first day with all of us together!

Oklahoma Trip-Day 1

Jeremy checked out our summer schedule and told me he thought the second week of June was our best bet for a family vacation.  The next day Julia came home and excitedly announced the band was going to Worlds of Fun the Monday of that same week.  Argh.  They go once every four years but as with everything four-ish years ago, Covid messed up the cycle and I had completely forgotten it was a thing at all, let alone realized this was the year.  We hadn't really decided where we wanted to go so I decided we'd go south, pick up the kids from Worlds of Fun and then keep going.  We picked Tulsa (due to a sweet Airbnb deal) which worked out just fine!

Samuel and Thomas couldn't go with us so it was just Jeremy, Nick and I on the way down to Kansas City.  We went early enough to take Nick to Science City and Fritz's, neither of which he remembered.

Never too old for Fritz's!  Even if Nick insisted on the silly face.

Then on to Science City.

I once rode this bike and I know there's pictures probably somewhere on the blog, but I couldn't find them.

I'm pretty sure this is the entirety of Nicholas practicing this summer.

We often do a cave tour on vacation but this was the closest we got this year.

They had a fun new (to us at least) out door area.  I think the second climber looks like a can of Pringles.

After the museum we picked up Julia and Philip from Worlds of Fun (only a little trouble finding them, I was at the regular entrance, they were at the bus one) and had dinner with Bob and Melissa.  We'd called Bob for a restaurant recommendation and since our Airbnb was only a couple neighborhoods over from where Bob and Melissa live, they joined us!  It was a fun to hang out with them and the restaurant, BRGR was tasty!  I already copied my burger here at home.  The burger was pretty normal but it was on parmesan crusted bread as a bun and it was sooo good.  We spent the night in KC and drove the rest of the way to Tulsa the next day. 

Wisconsin Vacation Day 6

Before we left Waterloo we stopped at the John Deere Musuem.

This design drawing table was a big hit!

Nick redrew the cranberry picker he designed when he was five.  He always did want to submit his design to John Deere.  When he finished I noticed he wasn't carrying the drawing.

He left it there of course!

Philip drew a design too.

There were lots of things to see there

Waterloo Boys are my favorite tractors.  Yes, I have a favorite tractor.  It's the metal wheels.  I think they're cool.

and a 4400 just like on Jeremy's Grandpa's farm.  We had a good time there.

We left for home after a couple hours at the museum.  When we stopped at a rest stop for lunch an hour later there was no lunch in the van.  I stuck the whole bag in the fridge after we all made sandwiches thinking they could stay cool until the last minute.  And there they stayed.  Drat.  At least it was the broken thermal bag.

We got home before dinner so we had some much needed quiet time that night.  It was a great vacation!