Family Road Trip ~ Part 2

The second day of our trip was pretty much like the first...lots of driving! We woke up and took advantage of the hot breakfast in the hotel lounge before showering and hitting the road again. We continued our drive through New Mexico before coming to the pan handle portion of Texas.

The only exciting adventure in Texas was driving through a thunder and lightening storm.  I also believe Texas is where we stopped to eat our lunch at a truck stop.  Not too exciting eh? 

Now getting a picture with the Oklahoma sign was quite an adventure.  We didn't see it until we had passed it a short ways and I yelled for Wayne to stop.  The kids and I had to hike it a few hundred yards through tall, dry grass and thousands of locusts.  Two of them hit Seth in the face, one being his eye and our legs were a bit scratched up and itchy, but it was well worth it!  Then Wayne thought he would be nice and back up to get us and ended up running into/over a post.  The post bent all the way over and our van now has a scratched up rear end, reminding us of our trip.

With the freeways being a bit different than in California, we got a teeny bit lost before finally finding our hotel. Once we checked in, we headed to downtown Oklahoma City and ate another gross dinner from McDonald's. I would have liked to walk around some, as the town seemed quite fun, but we had to get up early the next morning. The hotel had no pool, so we just relaxed by watching tv shows on their cable (something we don't have at home). 

The next morning we got ready for church and headed to Tuttle, OK for church.  Some friends who used to live in CA, but now live in OK were able to get Wayne in to lead worship at their current church.  Although the people were very nice, the church is not what we expected out of a small town.  We had anticipated lots of cowboy boots & hats and instead found most people dressed in casual, laid back CA style clothes, the pastor wore loafers with no socks and the worship leader said he didn't even like country music.  What!??!  It felt like we were at Saddleback church in Orange County, CA.  Ha ha!

Even though there were no cowboys to be seen, there were plenty of gentlemen.  It was pouring rain and when we pulled into the gravel parking lot, I noticed that all the men were dropping off their wives & children off at the front door before finding a parking spot.  Wayne on the other hand just pulled into a parking spot expecting us to get wet!  Ha ha.  I said "well, you sure can tell the difference between a CA guy and an OK guy by how they treat their women"  He immediately drove around and dropped us off in front of the door, while another man came up with a large umbrella and escorted the kids and I in.  Loved it!

We happened to be in Oklahoma just a couple of weeks after the Moore, OK tornado.  Although we didn't go into Moore, it was quite an eye opening experience to see debris over 20 miles from there just lying on the ground next to the highway.  Tuttle is the next town over, so we did see a few buildings that were partially torn apart.  I can't even imagine what it would  have been like to actually have visited Moore and even more so, what it would have been like to live through such a natural disaster.  Just so sad.

One thing Seth loved, they threw a birthday party just for him!  Okay, not really, but it was Seth's 7th birthday and the children's church was having a party, but it was actually for Jesus.

After church, our friends took us out to eat at a local pizza joint.  We were the only people in there for a couple of hours, which was a good thing, because the kids had lot of energy!  We celebrated Seth's birthday a bit more by letting him open his present.

He got the watch I saw him eying at Bass Pro Shop.  Now he just has to learn to tell time!

After filling our bellies and having a nice long afternoon catching up with old friends, it was time to hit the road again.  Only, Elsie left her baby doll at the church, so we had to head back there to retrieve it.  Luckily, Bill had the keys to get us inside!

Next time, I will journal about our time in Missouri.