Hiking with the Horton's

Hiking with the Horton's sounds like it could be a Dr. Seuss book doesn't it!  Monday was a beautiful day and my friend Dana and I wanted to get the kids out of the house and out into the fresh air.  We decided on Turkey Mountain for a hike.  We chose the blue trail because it was only supposed to take about 40 minutes.

  Well we had 5 children with us, we found a pond, we found rocks, sticks, and dirt.  It didn't take us 40 min it took us almost 2 hours which was fine.  We had a great time except toward the end when we came back to the pond...hmmm, wonder what happened?  We were following the boys and they went straight we said you missed a blue marker we have to turn here. All I'll admit to is that we should have gone with what the 8 year old and 11 year old boys wanted to do, these city slicker mama's had no clue and no sense of direction but we made it back to the parking lot safely. 

As we were getting ready to leave an older gentleman came riding up on a horse of course!  He let the kids all pet Sugar (his horse) and even let Malia and Kenzie climb up on the horses back.  My phone's battery was dead by now but Malia got a pic of Kenzie for me.  

Next time we're thinking about heading out to Redbud Valley Nature Preserve.  What's your favorite hiking spot in your neck of the woods?

Thanks for reading,

 

Tulsa zoo with Heritage Home school group

We enjoyed a beautiful day at the Tulsa zoo with our home school group.  We had a great turnout and everyone had a fun time!

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Answers to Blue Hole questions

UPDATE: Prices have changed.  It's $10 per car to get in, $15 per night to camp with no electric and $20 per night with electric.

I have been getting a lot of emails about the Blue Hole in Salina, OK so here are some answers to the many questions.

1. Q:  Is it really cold?  A: Yes, it's spring fed so it's really cold and feels great on these hot 100 degree days!

2. Q: How much is it?  A: $5 per carload for the day and $10 to camp overnight

3. Q: What are the hours? A: Sunday-Thursday 9am-9pm and Friday and Saturday 9am-10pm and they usually close for the winter after Labor Day weekend

4. Q: Do they have bathrooms? A: Yes, but they aren't always reliable, sometimes they are closed and most of the time no toilet paper (hint... bring your own)

5. Q: Do they have a place to buy food? A: Yes, it's concession type food like popcorn, pizza, hamburgers, snow cones, french fries, etc and they have very reasonable prices.  You also have the option of bringing food in and yes they have picnic tables but they don't have a lot of them.

6. Q: What do I need to bring?  A: This is what I personally like to bring, drinks (no alcohol permitted), snacks, bug spray, sunblock or sunscreen, towels, a blanket for the kids to rest on, chairs (the ones in the bag that you bring to ball games sit very well in the shallow water), floats, rafts, inner tube, floaties or life vest for little ones(it does get deep in the middle), crock shoes or swim shoes (the waterfall area is very slick), my kids like to bring goggles so they can dive down and look for fish (the water is very clear and you can see everything),a bucket to hold the minnows that the kids catch, a small net to chase minnows with and I usally bring bandaids and some small type of first aide kit too.

7. Q: How do I get there?  A: From Tulsa, go east on RT 412 to Locust Grove then north (left turn) on RT 82 to Salina. In Salina, find Kenwood Rd. and go east for about 7 miles to the park.

We come from Owasso so we just head to Claremore on Hwy 20 and just take 20 East to Salina, when we are in Salina we just follow the road all the way to the 4 way stop and keep going straight and then follow the winding road for 7 miles and Blue Hole is on the right side.

8. Q: What is the phone #?  A: 918-434-5507 and the owners name is Wanda!

9. Q: Is there really a rope swing? A: Yes, follow the creek that leads out of the Blue Hole and it leads to a smaller hole and that's where the rope swing is at. UPDATE:I'm sad to say that the rope swing is now gone.  A storm came through and the large tree that the rope swing hung on was destroyed.


If you have anymore questions please email me and I will try to find out for you!

Stuart Park

One day we decided to go check out Gilcrease Museum again. It had been several years since we have visited Gilcrease, I think it was when Makenzie had some of her art shown at the museum. Anyway, it's been too long so we went on homeschoolers day because homeschool families get in for free! We parked in the North parking lot and started walking and saw Stuart Park and decided to go explore. We never made it into the museum because this park was so beautiful and we got a little geocaching in while we were enjoying the beautiful park and of course I took a bunch of photos!

Woolaroc 2010

Our homeschool group planned a field trip to Woolaroc! Woolaroc was established in 1925 as the ranch retreat of oilman Frank Phillips. The ranch is a 3,700 acre wildlife preserve.
The mountain men just happened to be camping out so we visited them and learned so many interesting things from them. A couple of things we learned were how to shoot a rifle and how to throw a tomahawk. Then, we went on to the museum, had a picnic lunch and explored the property. It was a BEAUTIFUL day and we enjoyed spending time with Grammy, Devin, Paige and Brook (cousins).

Owasso Historical Museum

This was a children's pew at the Mennonite Church

This window was taken from the Mennonite Church that is now Discovery Bible Fellowship where we attend church

This month has been full of field trips to museums and as we were driving down Main St. in Owasso we wondered why we haven't ever been to our towns museum? HMMMM, we better stop now because we saw the open sign on the sidewalk. The Owasso Historical Museum is a neat little museum and the ladies were so helpful and told us a lot of information about the things we were looking at. We will be back to enjoy it when we have more time.

Treasure Hunting

Kenzie's friend Peyton helped us find our first geocache

They each took a treasure and left a treasure

Putting it back

This was a fun one

Easy one

Kylan's first find

For years our family has enjoyed letterboxing and now that we have these neat iPhones with a GPS in them we decided to try Geocaching and we are hooked! It has become our new family hobby and we've had so much family time hiking and enjoying this spring weather plus the fact that you get to pick a "treasure" out of most caches but you also need to bring a "treasure" to leave for someone else. I had the kids go through their rooms and find little things that we could put in the caches and they came up with a little container just full of "treasures" that they don't want anymore.
WARNING If you plan on going geocaching in Owasso don't look at the pics because they will give away some of the cache sites!

Will Rogers Museum

We love to run over to Claremore and go through the Will Rogers Memorial Museum and this time Kevin went with us. We had a great time!

Osage Hills State Park

The famous hot hamburger with gravy over all.

After pigging out on some yummy Murphy's Steakhouse hot hamburgers we decided to do a little hiking and check out Osage Hills State Park. It was gorgeous even in the dead of winter so we can just imagine how beautiful it will be in the fall, summer and spring. Enjoy our slide show...it's a long one!