Courtney's Blog July 12th, Day 7 of the Epic McFarland Journey!

Man, this is the best hotel we stayed in yet. We woke up to the smell of fresh bacon cooking. We were greeted with eggs, bacon, toast and orange juice. There was also some beautiful flowers on the table that Gideon had picked the night before. After a nice breakfast, we hung out with Windy a little more. We then got ready to go enjoy Oklahoma City!

<A little background, we have a cooler we keep in the backseat. It holds mainly water and juice boxes, but everyday we put a couple of milks in it and Gideon drinks them. At the end of the day, we take them out and and bring them into the hotel.>

We take our tour guide and family friend, Donna, and go on our way in our van, Minnie. We accidentally shift the top of the cooler and I smell something putrid in there. It's horrifying, but for the sake of our tour guide, I try to ignore it and tell myself we'll deal with this later. We get to Oklahoma City and our first stop is Bricktown! which is a cool downtown area with small boat channels. We took a ride on one of the boats and it was so fun. How Quaint! As we were getting on the boat, the boat driver told Gideon that if he sees a duck, he should "quack". For those of you who know Gideon...you know this was a death sentence for the rest of us. Do you have any idea how many ducks are on the Bricktown channels? Me neither, but it's a lot. At every turn Gideon is shouting at the top of his lungs "Quack! Quack! Quack!" and at one point he even did the quacking to the Elmo Theme Song. Despite my "shhhhh", the quacking continued. The lovely couple from Scotland who had sat next to us were really happy with their seat choice.

Next we walk around and we decide to have lunch at Sonic. We then got back in the car and drove over to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. This was sobering. There are chairs for each victim and seeing them all was staggering. Seeing the smaller chairs representing the children who had died was devastating. Just when I was starting to feel overwhelmed by it all, I hear a very loud "Quack Quack Quack". There were ducks on the water. We walked down along the avenue towards the museum, and the gates holding the mementos for people lost. Gideon was taken by this. We all were. We decided to skip the museum as it was a long trek and we were pretty sure it was a bit too much for the kiddos. We head back to the car. It is in the high 90s. Gideon starts losing it. He is hysterical because he is hot and tired and thirsty. The cooler gets opened again, oh God, no. It's awful.

We head to go meet the new babies. Donna has recently become a grandmother of FOUR! We see the babies, and some horses. The kids have a great time. The babies are just as expected...gorgeous and perfect.

We go back to Donna's house for dinner and enjoy spaghetti and meatballs again. Abby had three servings, again. With full tummies, we are ready to start our journey again. We head out around 6pm to get some headway into OK. But first, we stop at the gas station to dispose of the dead body in our cooler. It was milk. We had left milk in that cooler for 1 night and 1 90 degree day. It was horrible. I am also fairly certain it won't be the last time we do that.

There were some beautiful sites on the drive out to Elk City. Lots of sunsets and green fields. We get to the hotel and turn on the tv. There is some weird station that is just a picture of the moon and water. Gideon is now obsessed. Abby is disgusted and just wants him to shut-up. Gideon is begging to watch the "moon" show. We convince him he can in the morning, after his shower. Happiness awaits...

Summary:

Lots of discovery. Exciting, Beautiful and Somber sites. Wonderful and Awful smells.

Ended the Day at the La Quinta, Elk City, OK

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