Jesse James, Ozarkland, and the Dodgers (12/30/18)

As soon as the kids were up, they begged to go to the playground. As soon as they hit the freezing weather and saw the ice on the slide, they realized their mistake. It was still nice to stretch and get moving, though. Rosalie found a musical instrument and was able to read the letters and play a song!  I was so impressed! They were soon ready to go back and warm up in the cozy cabin while Arthur loaded the car. This cabin also had a loft bed, so the kids were excited.

After Arthur scraped the frost off the windshield, accidentally snapped the frozen window washing tube, and recharged the dead battery - we were off.

Our first stop was Meramec Caverns at Uncle Steven's recommendation. It was a beautiful drive. We'd like to come back some day and canoe down the river and take the cave tour (1.5 hours, so not an option today). You can go look at the main cavern for free, so we wandered through the gift shop and then went inside to look around. It was neat! Apparently, Jesse James and his gang used to hide out there!

 

 

We piled back and hit the road. There was an accident, so they detoured us off the main road for awhile. So, when we signs for Ozarkland, we figured that was a good place to stop and stretch our legs. 

 

We got some ideas for home decorating:

  

Sharing the same parking lot was a huge junk pile, er, "antique mall." This one was too dangerous to allow the kids in, but Arthur had a great time wandering through. We thought Uncle Ed would have gotten a kick out of this.

Rosalie kept yelling in my ear, so I borrowed Grace's earphones.

Finally, we made it to Oklahoma City. This is the one stop on our trip where there wasn't a KOA available, so we are staying in a hotel. The kids were bonkers from the long car ride and we could see a Bass Pro Shop from our hotel window. We decided a nice walk was in order to run some of the stink off of them. It worked. When we got there, they were in awe of the aquarium and animals and, well, just everything. Grace grabbed my phone and went a little crazy with the pictures. I had to delete about 500 photos later.

I took this photo - finally a quiet moment!

 On the walk back to the hotel, we saw these banners in the parking lot. Earlier, we had looked out our window to discover a baseball diamond (so cool!). Apparently, Oklahoma City's Dodgers are the feeder team for our Los Angeles Dodgers.

The view from our hotel room.

In our hotel!

 After Bass Pro Shop, we stopped by IHOP for dinner and admired the city skyline. We will have to come back someday and explore this city more thoroughly.