Published
Travel Log 6: Oklahoma, Land of Tornadoes
It's been a whirlwind of an adventure!
We’re not in Kansas anymore! Sorry, I’ve been waiting several months to make that Wizard of Oz quote. 😂
We’ve left Kansas and have been staying in Oklahoma for about 3 weeks now. It has been a great experience and Oklahoma might be a place we consider living in the future (tornadoes aside!).
Table of contents
- Welcome to Oklahoma, Home of the Tornadoes
- Brian’s Birthday
- Exploring Bricktown
- Blue Zoo
- Gathering in Tulsa
- Route 66
- Tiger Safari Park
- Coffee and Snow Cones?
- Oklahoma City Memorial
- OKC Zoo
- Boat Parade
- Perry’s Dinner
- Inside Out 2
- Visiting Old Friends
- Color Me Mine Pottery
- Bricktown Reprise
- All Aboard the Polar Express!
- Tulsa Zoo
- Classic Christmas
Welcome to Oklahoma, Home of the Tornadoes
When were were traveling from Wichita, KS down to our next AirBnB near Oklahoma City we became aware of several tornadoes that touched down that morning. They had caused destruction in a town very close to where we going to be staying and there were more storms moving across the state.
Living in PA all our lives didn’t really prepare us well for dealing with tornadoes. We specifically tried to avoid tornado season when planning our stay.
Thankfully an old high school friend of Katie’s has been living in Oklahoma for several years and is well versed in tornadoes. At her suggestion, we stopped for dinner in a small town to wait out the storms.
Thankfully the rest of our journey was smooth and we even saw a double rainbow!
However, the next morning we were woken up to our phones blaring an emergency broadcast about a tornado warning in the area. We did end up spending some quality time with the kids sitting in the walk-in closet. 😅
Apparently, we got a proper Oklahoma welcome!
Brian’s Birthday
Thankfully we haven’t encountered any other tornado warnings during our stay and hopefully, it stays that way! But we did encounter another kind of danger, getting older!
I celebrated my birthday by going to a nifty little frozen custard shop. And we played some of the new games that Katie bought me. 😍
Overall a relaxing birthday trying to not think about the election going on.
Exploring Bricktown
Our next adventure was to go into downtown Oklahoma City, in their Bricktown district. We went on a riverboat tour of Bricktown. We got the history of the area, learned about the man-made canal, found out why it’s called Bricktown (all the brick buildings!), and saw the Land Run Monument and other artwork.
We had a great tour guide and learned a lot.
After we finished our ride we grabbed some Melting Pot takeout. We figured taking it home would be less dangerous than letting little fingers burn themselves in the restaurant. The fondue was great, pricy, but good!
Blue Zoo
One afternoon we took a trip to the Blue Zoo. You would be forgiven for thinking that it was a zoo or maybe an aquarium. But in reality, it was a small part aquarium, a small part zoo, and a large part playground.
Spanning two floors it has several aquarium tanks and a small playground on the first floor. The second floor has some more tanks and several different kinds of animals and birds. And it also has another playground, a climbing wall, and, the kids’ favorite, several water play tables.
We ended up spending more time than we expected there. But the kids enjoyed it and got to meet a baby kangaroo!
Gathering in Tulsa
Over the weekend we went to the Gathering Place in Tulsa. The trip from OKC to Tulsa isn’t too bad. We’ve come to discover that most roads in Oklahoma are fairly straight so from OKC to Tulsa is mostly just one straight highway at 80mph.
Before we went to the Gathering Place itself we visited the Discovery Lab. Situated on one end of the park that is the Gathering Place, the Discovery Lab is a science center with some interactive exhibits.
It is on the smaller side, but the kids enjoyed climbing through some tunnels, playing at water tables, and collecting balls in the vacuum tube area. They also got to make some stop-motion videos, design clothes out of cardboard, and interact with their other exhibits. The Discovery Lab is a very hands-on science center.
After the Discover Lab, we visited the massive playground in the Gathering Place. The kids absolutely loved it and we parents only got minor anxiety about losing track of them. It gave us City Museum (St. Louis) vibes, but outside.
One of the towers you could climb up looked 2-3 stories tall. I just had to help Adeline climb up it. 😂
They’ve got an area for massive slides, another for large towers, another with rope bridges, and another with pods you can climb into. The kids had a blast and desperately want to return sometime.
Route 66
On our way back from Tulsa we took a slight detour to Pop’s 66. It’s a neat little landmark/convenience store that specializes in bottled soda. They have a huge variety of sodas to choose from, even our favorite from St. Louis, Fitz’s Root Beer (but none in the root beer flavor 😢). The kids enjoyed picking out different flavors.
It is a cool little stop on your way from Tulsa to Oklahoma City, just avoid getting gas there, it’s pricy compared to other gas stations!
Tiger Safari Park
We got the opportunity to go to the Tiger Safari Park. It’s not far from Oklahoma City and is a nice little zoo. We went because we wanted to get the VIP experience. We were able to pet or hold about 10 animals.
Some of the kids didn’t want to hold them (ahem, Emalyn), but we all enjoyed the experience. The zoo itself isn’t much to speak of, but we were able to feed some monkeys and lemurs. We put some food in a bucket for one of the monkeys. The monkey would then pull the rope to get the food where it could reach it.
Coffee and Snow Cones?
After we went to an escape room that wasn’t worth writing much about, we stopped by a local coffee shop. But it had a unique twist, it was a coffee and snow cone shop!
Beanstalk Coffee and Sno had a TON of flavor options. It took a while to sort out what flavors everyone wanted! Katie and I got their coffee and snow cone combo. One was good, but the other didn’t turn out as good.
Oklahoma City Memorial
One afternoon we took some time to go to the Oklahoma City National Memorial. We weren’t entirely sure what to expect, but we knew it covered the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. If the subject matter was more positive I would describe the memorial as fantastic.
But history isn’t always positive and that really hit our older kids hard. Especially our eldest daughter. The younger kids didn’t quite understand it.
The memorial covered the events leading up to and during the disaster. And the outside area was beautifully made. It got quite heavy at times, but we are glad we were able to go to see it.
OKC Zoo
The day we went to the Oklahoma City Zoo was quite chilly. They had Christmas decorations set up for their “Safari Lights” event, which was a nice bonus to the zoo even if we were there in the daylight. It is quite spread out, so prepare to do some walking if you visit!
Boat Parade
The evening after the zoo we got to go to a boat parade and fireworks show. It was a local event in the OKC “Boathouse district”. Parking was horrendous, apparently, this was their biggest turnout yet.
It was a lot of fun with water skiing elves and a guy in a reindeer costume on a water jetpack doing stunts. When it got darker there were around 20 or so boats with themed Christmas lights that paraded through. We’ve never been to a boat parade so it was a unique experience!
After the boat parade, there was a small fireworks and laser light show.
Perry’s Dinner
When our friend Kenny (he gets quite a lot of shoutouts on this blog!) found out that we were staying in OKC he insisted we go to Perry’s Dinner and get their cinnamon rolls. With all his raving we just had to go see what the fuss was about.
The dinner is a little run down, but a quaint place to eat. We ordered 6 cinnamon rolls (I think the waitress thought we were nuts) and thoroughly enjoyed them. We aren’t sure about the rest of their food, but their cinnamon rolls were good.
Inside Out 2
One of our evenings we dedicated to a movie night for Inside Out 2. It’s a great family movie and we did a whole blog post about it if you are interested!
Visiting Old Friends
We got a chance to visit Katie’s old high school friend who talked us through the tornadoes on our first day. It was great to catch up with her. And since she and her husband also have 5 kids around the same age as our kids, they all had fun playing together.
After some initial awkwardness between the kids they became fast friends and didn’t want to leave when it was getting dark! We hope to be able to see them again before we move on from Oklahoma.
Color Me Mine Pottery
For an afternoon activity, we took the kids to a cute little pottery place called Color Me Mine. The kids picked out a piece of pottery to color. Eli just had to get another mug because the one he made in South Carolina took a dive off the kitchen counter. Spoiler alert, he broke this one too when I was in the process of writing this post. 😅
Adeline (our 2-year-old) was insistent on getting a larger hippo piggy bank. We knew she would get bored part way though so we tried to get her to pick a smaller piece. “I love hippos!” she says and that was the end of the discussion!
Bricktown Reprise
One lazy evening we returned to the Bricktown district to play some mini-golf right next to the canal. Things usually get chaotic when we mini golf, but we were able to slow down some because of a larger group that was in front of us.
After that, we revisited the Land Run Monument from the walking path. But before we made it there the kids needed a bathroom break so we stopped at a nearby Bass Pro shop. The guy at the checkout said, “Looks like you guys are building an army.” That’s a new one for us as our family size gets all sorts of comments. But it was less rude than most!
The Land Run Monument is a cool piece of history and consists of a number of large bronze statues. Since the weather was perfect, we took a nice stroll around the monument.
All Aboard the Polar Express!
Last Saturday we got tickets to the Polar Express train ride by the Oklahoma Railway Museum. The tickets were a bit pricy, but the ride was phenomenal. It was less of a train ride and more of a theater experience that happened to be on a moving train.
The actors portrayed big scenes from the Polar Express movie, complete with dancing, golden tickets, and of course, hot chocolate! The kids even got their own little bell and a visit from Santa. The people involved in the production were all great and deserve a huge round of applause.
If you ever get the chance to ride it, we highly recommend it!
After the train ride, we did a movie night for the Polar Express. This was less involved than our Inside Out 2 movie night, but, of course, we had more hot chocolate!
Tulsa Zoo
We went back to Tulsa over the weekend to take the kids back to the Gathering Place. However, when we arrived in downtown Tulsa we couldn’t make it to the Gathering Place as the roads were all blocked off. It turns out there was a marathon happening that same morning! After unsuccessfully trying to navigate around the marathon we gave up and went to the Tulsa Zoo instead.
The Tulsa Zoo is smaller than the Oklahoma City Zoo (as shown by their confusion around our AZA membership!). The layout of the Tulsa Zoo was much more straightforward than that of the OKC Zoo.
We had a picnic lunch outside the eagle enclosure. We also stopped by their playground, which is pretty cool for a zoo. Not exactly a replacement for the Gathering Place, but the kids still had fun. We did try returning to the Gathering Place, but since it was Sunday afternoon the place was packed and even had signs out saying the parking lot was full! We ended up passing on the crowds and returned to our AirBnB instead.
Classic Christmas
In an attempt to make up for not going to the Gathering Place, we went to the “Classic Christmas” at Remington Park. It is a cool light display with food and craft vendors. For an extra price, you can also tube down a fake hill or ice skate.
It was a warm day when we went so that was a stark change from our usual freezing Christmas light outings back in Pennsylvania!
It’s sponsored by Coca-Cola and at all the drink stands they sold an overpriced light bulb glass with punch. The glass lit up so the kids really thought that was cool.
We’ve got 2 weeks left in Oklahoma before we continue on to our next stop in Texas. We are having a great time and are really settling into this travel life.
