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.