Ever since we have been married, Em and I have had this joke that our future dream home is going to be in Oklahoma City. The reason why that was funny is because neither of us had ever even been to Oklahoma or have any family or friends who live there. The way that I decided that our dream home is in OKC is that Em has always said the most ideal location would be somewhere relatively warm, inexpensive, and close to a city and airport. And ever since then, I would joke that we would just have to buy a house in OKC. (It was kind of a joke, but at the same time if you ever compare homes around DC vs. OKC on Zillow, you might think about moving there too =)
So with all that said,, I was actually pretty excited to visit Oklahoma and find our future dream home. ;) Before visiting the only things I really knew about Oklahoma were that they had a lot of ranches, oil, tornados, and a good basketball team. But when we actually visited, I found out that Oklahoma is a really cool and diverse state! Something that pictures can’t capture is just how awesome and kind the people we met during our short visit to OK were. While in Oklahoma, we climbed a waterfall, did some dirt biking, bottle fed a baby lion and tiger, and of course visited our future home of Oklahoma City! One of the bummers of our visit was that we were there during tornado season, so decided to cut our visit short. But I definitely would love to go back and see more of Oklahoma.
Turner Falls
Less than an hour from the Texas border is this awesome waterfall called Turner Falls. On the way to the falls we had a bit of an incident =) Em stood up in our RV and whacked her head on the corner of our TV (I think I forgot to push it in the whole way from our last stop). So here we were on this really windy road with no space to pull over. Em’s head is bleeding pretty bad, my one hand is covered from her blood so I am steering with one hand and Em is in the back of the RV leaning over the sink trying to stop the bleeding. Not being able to see her head I didn’t know if we needed to go to the hospital or not. I just knew she was bleeding a pretty good amount and I felt so bad for her poor head! But even if we did have to find some medical help there was no place to turn around or even pull over. (Haha we were probably a pretty comical sight. Although at the time it didn’t really seem too funny. =) Fortunately I have a pretty tough wife and the cut wasn’t too deep. So Em decided to keep going and we made it to Turner Falls without any more incidents. (This is why Em has a hat on for any pictures the rest of the day =)
Bruised head and all, Em said she is very glad that she decided to continue on to Turner Falls. The falls themselves are really cool. Since it isn’t a national park, you are able to swim right up to the falls or climb right up to the top. (This was also the first place that I tested our drone out at and fortunately didn’t end up crashing it in the water!) The water was a bit chilly and Em didn’t feel like putting her head under water after hitting her head, so we decided to climb up to the top of the falls. It was a really pretty view and this was one of the first falls that we visited on our trip. (One disadvantage to visiting the falls is that because it isn’t a national park we couldn’t use our national park pass. The falls are privately owned and there are a bunch of cabins for people to stay close by. The area around the falls feels kind of more like a summer camp than a national or state park usually does. But the falls themselves were really cool and worth a visit if you are ever in OK.)
Cross Bar Ranch
Just down the road from Turner Falls is Cross Bar Ranch. The ranch sits on 6,500 acres in the Arbuckle Mountains and has over 100 miles of ATV trails. Since the start of our trip, I had been on the lookout for trails to take our dual sport motorcycles off-roading, so when I saw the Cross Bar Ranch online I knew that we had to go!
Another awesome thing about the Cross Bar Ranch is that they also have RV campsites, so we could spend all day and all night riding our motorcycles =) (If you don’t have your own bikes, the ranch rents out ATVs too). One of the guys who helped run the ranch told us about this trail that led to an awesome overlook so, after we parked our RV, we unloaded our bikes and headed out on the trail. The riding was a lot of fun and it felt great to be riding on something other than the road. A great thing about the ranch being in the mountains is that there is a lot of varying terrain so it made it a fun challenge to ride our motorcycles back to the overlook.
About 4 miles in, we got off our bikes to check where we were at and that is when it happened. Em’s bike wouldn’t start back up. We were too far away to push it back and our RV definitely wasn’t going to be able to make it back the trail to pick it up. Fortunately, my bike was still working, so Em hopped on the back and we headed back to the campsite. We told two of the Cross Bar Ranch employees about our issue and they took a UTV all the way back to our motorcycle, loaded it up ,and then spent about an hour trying to help us fix it! The guys at Cross Bar Ranch definitely turned our bad situation into a good one, and we were so grateful for their help. Unfortunately, we found out that the starter in Em’s bike went bad, so we decided not to go back out in case something happened to my bike too. I guess I’ll just have to keep looking for some more off-roading trails on our trip!
Tiger Safari
From Cross Bar Ranch, we headed north to Tiger Safari. Here, we got to interact with a bunch of reptiles and a monkey, and bottle feed a baby lion and baby white tiger. One of the scariest but coolest animals that we got to hold was an albino boa constrictor. It was only a couple of feet long, but we actually got to put it around our necks.
(Haha I think I let Em go first for this one). Our favorite interactions, though, were with the baby tiger and white lion. They were a lot of fun and really playful. It is amazing to think just how big these animals can get. It isn’t everyday that you get to hold a boa constrictor and bottle feed a baby tiger/lion!
Oklahoma City
Our next stop was to our future home city (that we had never visited before) of Oklahoma City. And honestly the city was pretty cool. It seemed like it was a great sized city and the area that they call Bricktown seemed like a mini version of the San Antonio River Walk. It had a small river with tour boats and was lined with several bars and restaurants. The only thing that was a little confusing to us is that we were there on a Friday evening and there weren’t too many people out at these cool restaurants. We walked past the fastfood chain Sonic’s headquarters and couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to drink a Sonic shake at the Sonic HQ =)
A really sad part of OKC’s history is the Oklahoma City bombing. We went and visited the memorial and museum. The city did a really good job in honoring the victims of such a tragic event. We learned a lot about this tragedy, and and it reminded us to pray for the victims and their families. The memorial and museum are well worth a visit.
We really liked the city and it seemed like there is a lot of new and exciting things to do. Em said though that some of the toughest things about moving there would be that it is far away from our friends and family, isn’t next to a beach, and we haven’t gotten used to the idea of tornados being a regular thing. But overall, I think the “dream city” of Oklahoma City is still in the running =)
There are definitely some things that Em and I still want to explore in Oklahoma. Three of them that we planned to do but didn’t get to due to rainy weather were ride our motorcycles at Little Sahara Sand Dunes, visit Great Salt Plains State Park, and see a herd of bison. Em and I joke with each other that we will just have to make a round 2 of this trip and go around and see all the things we missed the first time! But until then, thank you Oklahoma for being a wonderful visit!
