The City - Route 66, Science Museum

Oklahoma City is peace of mind. Easy on the eye.

Even with its  big city staples - restaurants, businesses, billboards - land and history still prevails. Off the highway cows graze right beside strip malls and apartment complexes. Driving around downtown, you can't help it but wonder about buildings that certainly have a story or two to tell.

Our specific destination this past weekend was Edmond, one of the suburbs of Oklahoma City. This time, the purpose of our visit was to celebrate our friends' wedding - wedding rehearsal dinner on Friday and ceremony on Saturday evening. And so we had some time in between to check out a few places.

I wanted to drive on the stretch of Route 66 in Arcadia, OK - right outside Edmond. Well, what I really wanted was to cruise on it on a roaring motorcycle. Maybe next time. We pit stopped at the famous POPS.

Here's our greeter:

Giant neon soda bottle.

POPS is soda heaven. And then if you're hungry and patient, POPS is a busy restaurant too. Oh, and a gas station, of course! With some robot-looking pumps that say "good morning" and hand you coffee.

The store has a futuristic feel like it came from "The Jetsons" with a geometric shaped building and walls shelved with soda bottles that sparkle with the sunlight.

We browsed through the multi billion types of soda which go from coca-cola to more exquisite types, like:

Bacon soda

We grabbed some snacks and sat at the tables outside. Bella had Root Beer and Cheetos. Sean grabbed his beloved Dr. Pepper and a bag o' chips. I got me a bottle of some Brazilian soda made from Guarana - to go, please. I have yet to savor it.

My 2 lovely "hummingbirds" before the sugar feast.

The next day, we ran back to the mother road to see another famous spot - The Round Barn - just a hop away from POPS:

The Arcadia Round Barn.

This barn became so popular because...well, because it's round! It was no small feat to get several pieces of wood to "bend it like Beckham" back in 1898 when it was built (or even now??). And because of its prime location and because of the perseverance from a "gang" of retired men determined to rebuild it after its roof collapsed in 1988. All 60' of it. So, today it looks in top shape and it earned an Oklahoma Historical landmark title.

The barn has two levels. At the bottom is the gift shop and upstairs is the "loft" - an empty room available for parties and weddings.

The gift shop has several antique pieces along lots of reading material telling the story of the barn. It has also other items that could be at the nearest flea market. It all gives it character. 

Upstairs at the loft, you can really hear the sound of the motorcycles cruising down the road. 

Upstairs

We walked around the room admiring the round ceiling. It is really impressive - millions of pieces of wood interwoven.

Admission is free and the experience is priceless.

And so we got back on the road heading towards the Science Museum.

After looking at the Museum's brochure, we first planned the times we were going to do the scheduled shows like the Planetarium and Science Live. Admission to the museum includes those but it does not include the Dome theater. We decided to postpone that one for the next time.

Considering that it was the middle of the summer, the crowd at the museum was not bumper-to-bumper that day. Not a whole lot of "excuses me"'s or yielding necessary. And the best of all: no long lines.

The museum is very open and you can see almost all exhibits' areas from any point. And then there are some other areas that need to be hunt down - the food, for example. Mainly when I couldn't find that map again in my purse.

There are two levels but we did not get to go upstairs. We ran out of time. We had a Wedding to go! We spent 4 hours just at the first floor.

As one would expect in a Science Museum, there are all sorts of interactive whatchamajiggers demonstrating a scientific concept and many Galleries exploring and explaining the beautiful world we live. And then there is the Segway course:

My lovely Segway'er

Well, I eat my words. Maneuvering a Segway takes a lot of science. As you control it with your body, when you lean in one direction, guess what happens? Easier said than done.

We had a massive amount of fun at the Tinkering Garage. We were all over the Lego table. We were uninterrupted for a while until other museumnerds showed up trying to grab the pieces we were using to build our Lego cars so we could race them down the incline race track and have a winner. We are polite people so we just gave them dirty looks. 

Bella enjoyed playing with foaming with germs blocks:

After Sean won the car race, We went to the GadgetTrees area which has the nation's tallest spiral slide. Bella tried it and I think the downhill force was too much and she hurt her leg. But she was Ok.

GadgetTrees

After a few more "What does this do?"'s and a game of Foosball with Sean (I let him win), we had an appetite very well defined. We found the "Pavlov" Cafe (how funny) and started salivating. 

With bellies full, bladders empty, it was finally time for the Science Live show. 

A very animated host named Jacob drove the show flawlessly. He made kids 9 to 99 laugh as he demonstrated and explained different experiments using kids from the audience. Bella enjoyed all of it and I wished, as she gets ready to start school, for Science to be ever so fun and interesting to her.

I heart her.

So, by then, we still had not done the Planetarium, so the Strategery was to watch that show and then leave right away to get ready for the wedding.

As the show starts, the host talks in a soft voice about Polaris... Big Dipper...Little Dipper. The theater is pitch black by now. The chairs are extremely comfortable with full head support. Suddenly a commotion interrupts the peace as everyone starts standing up trying to exit. And lights are back on!

That was the best power nap ever! 

We were then ready for our evening at the wedding. It was a beautiful evening. 

A Chickasaw Day

Since I've moved to Oklahoma a year and a few humid months ago, I've been curious about the Native American presence and influence in the area. I've Googled and read some good amount of Native American History that I find very interesting.

On Friday, the "Fam" and I headed to Sulphur, OK to visit the Chickasaw Cultural Center. The plan was to visit the center and then go swimming at the Chickasaw National Recreation Area. The trip to the Cultural Center had been in the planning for a while and it finally happened.

On the way, since I'm generally curious, we stopped to check this place out:

Arbuckle Mountain Fried Pies

The Menu

They have several fruit pies and breakfast pies too. Behind the counter is a mini pie factory where little look-alike workers make the pies while singing a song and dancing in harmonic choreography. I kid :)

We ordered our pies (I recommend the Pecan!) and headed to the back of the shop to an area upstairs to enjoy them - because upstairs anywhere is always more fun.

And so after filling up the gas tank as well (this place is also a gas station and has those old WALL-E looking pumps), we got back on the road.

Only about 40 minutes later, we arrived at our destination. This is the first view of the Chickasaw Cultural Center as we pass the entrance:

Chickasaw Cultural Center

The Center, according to TravelOK.org, spreads over 109 acres and features more than 96,000 sq ft of indoor space, including an exhibit center, the Holisso Research Center and a large-format theatre.

Here's our greeter so we had to take a picture with him:

Chickasaw warrior in the background.

We then headed on our own expedition through the campus. We watched a short movie about History and culture of the Chickasaw, walked through the Spirit Forest, walked around the Galleries and learned a whole lot about the Chickasaw and Choctaw History and how they ended up in Oklahoma, and ate lunch at the reasonably priced Aaimpa Café. We then visited the Sky Pavilion, the Amphitheater, the Traditional Village and lastly, the Honor Garden.

The Center has a contemporary Architecture (according to my very basic knowledge of Architecture). So one should not expect to experience primitive Indian life during his visit. Well, except when you make it to the Traditional Village and your 5-year-old points to these wooden stick structures and call them "monkey bars":

The "monkey bars" and my 2  lovely "monkeys".

They were actually used for drying animal skins, grass, etc.

The Center has 2 gift shops. One with some authentic (and expensive for us) Indian artifacts and another with t-shirts and very few other non-artifact things we weren't compelled into buying. Well, except a fox stuffed animal made in China my daughter asked for.

We'd like to have walked all the way around the campus but we were being cooked under the 100 degree temperature. So before we turned well-done, we concluded our visit, got in the car and drove to the Chickasaw "Water Park".

This was my second time at the Chickasaw Park where I actually got in the water. I went one other time in the Spring but just walked through the paved trails from the Nature Center - all the way to the "epicenter", the springs where all the water comes from. It's a very Zen walk - peaceful.

As before, we went straight to the "Little Niagara" - about an 8-feet tall (according to my hubby) waterfall perfect for jumping or even diving into the waters below. Although we didn't jump, my daughter and I made a pact to do it together next time we go there!

Little Niagara. Source: TravelOk.com

It was perfect. No huge crowds, the water was cold but it felt good in that hot day.

My 2 lovely "fishes".

There's so much still to be seen and done in this park. There are several other swimming spots, plenty of hiking trails, fishing and even bird-watching - Bald Eagles migrate to the area in the Winter season. No admission fee! Except for the Nature Center, the rest of the park stays open 24 hours. I'm thinking swimming under the moonlight. Well, snakes might be thinking the same...

After some hours of swimming and chatting with visitors and cowardly watching people jump from the Little Niagara, it was time to go home. Our other family member, Ace the Dog, was left inside the house alone and must have been doing the potty dance by then.

Oh, but wait...we made one more pit-stop. My husband wanted to check out the Bison at the Bison Viewpoint which is a fenced area off the main road where Bison frolic. I'm not sure if they were being private that day, or if my daughter's silly shrieks scared them, or maybe if they just packed and moved, but we didn't see no Bison.

"Chirp...chirp"

That was the end. We made it home safely and left behind a trail of contentment. It was a great day. A Chickasaw day.