Last week my friend Aaron, co-host of the Amigos Podcast for Amiga computers, drove to Oklahoma with his son Luke to visit and hang out for a few days. Prior to their arrival, Susan and I began brainstorming different places we wanted to show them along with restaurants we wanted to eat at. As the list continued to grow, I ended up dividing the tour into three days and sorting things by location. By the time I was done, the whiteboard looked like this.

Aaron and Luke arrived Sunday evening and Susan reminded me they would most likely be tired from driving all day, so we didn’t plan any activities. As bedtime approached I told them to get a good night’s sleep, because we were going to be pretty busy over the next three days.

Monday

I dubbed the first day of our tour “Yukon,” although we did a lot of things outside of Yukon. After a brief drive-through of “where Bob Funk used to live,” we started the day at the intersection of Route 66 and Garth Brooks Blvd. From there we scooted over to the new Route 66 sign in front of the flour mill, which also marks where the Chisolm Trail passed through Yukon. After driving around a few more spots in Yukon we had lunch at Ted’s Escondido (which was good but the service was not as good as usual) before heading over to Cactus Jack’s. Aaron, like me, has owned many arcade games and is also a fan of pinball, so the three of us had a great time there. After lunch (or maybe before?) we stopped at the Route 66 Farmer’s Market mostly to see the animals, most of which were inside sleeping in the shade. On the way back to the house we hit Vintage Stock and GameXChange to do some random shopping. After taking a break back at the house for a few hours, we timed a trip to Pops 66 perfectly to arrive just as the sun was setting. After taking a few pictures outside we went in only to discover they were about to close. We picked up a few bottles of pop and then stopped at Whataburger for dinner, which was on their “to do” list.

Tuesday

Day two was “OKC,” and was planned by Susan. For breakfast we stopped at one of our favorite breakfast places, Eggceptional Cafe on NW Expressway. From there we went downtown and drove around briefly before parking and heading down to the riverwalk and taking the boat tour of OKC. While downtown we walked through the Murrah memorial and walking through Bass Pro before driving to midtown to check out the Up/Down Arcade and get a snack from A Slice of Pie. Up/Down was having a private party and you have to be 21 to enter so that turned out to be a bust, but the pie was delicious. We had planned to have lunch at S&B Burger downtown and visit Factory Obscura, but Factory Obscura is closed on Tuesdays (oops) and so we called an audible and went to Incredible Pizza for lunch and more games. By the time we got home everyone was overly stuffed and tuckered out, so we spent the evening watching a couple of movies and hanging out in the pool.

Wednesday

Wednesday was titled “El Reno” and was another super busy day. We started the day in downtown El Reno, taking pictures at the giant Route 66 sign and climbing on the Rock Island railroad car before having an onion burger for lunch. After showing them a video of Sid’s and building the place up, we drove over to find that Sid’s was closed for the week… so Robert’s Grill it was! From there we drove over to Lucky Star Casino to see the buffalo which were out but not as close to the fence as I was hoping. We did some driving after that, stopping at the Cherokee Trading Post and picking up some souvenirs (and being much closer to buffalo) before going to the Thomas P. Stafford Air and Space Museum in Weatherford. I had not been there in nearly 20 years and it was so much better than I remembered. On the way home, we stopped by the Mustang Fire Department and got a personal tour from my friend, Andy. That evening we spent some more time out by the pool while enjoying some Hideaway Pizza.

Random Bits

On the Sunday they arrived, we took a quick drive around Lake Overholser to walk out on the dam. Aaron also wanted to see “the creek” behind my old house, which he’d heard about in an episode of my podcast. Throughout the tour Aaron wanted to see many of the locations I’ve mentioned in podcasts and blogs (like where Yukon Software used to be) along with several of the filming locations from my vanlife YouTube channel, Big Rob’s Van.

If you read my last post about having Cyclospora you might be wondering how I did all of this while also having to use the restroom constantly and the answer is… very carefully. I used the restroom in at least 2/3 of the locations I listed above. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta doo doo.

Aaron and Luke had a great time, I had a fun time showing them around, and Susan made everything awesome with all her planning and working out tons of logistics. Some vacations end with a feeling of rest and others end with being exhausted and I think this was the latter! I ended up taking the rest of the week off work to recuperate before returning to the real world.