Days Three and Four

On day two, we actually drove down to Dallas to spend the day with some family before heading out again on day three. This time we drove a bit west to visit a bucket list stop for my wife, Waco, Texas and home of the Gaines family. I'm sure many of you know who I am referring too especially if you watch home renovation shows. 

When my wife asked if we could stop there, I put my foot down and told her we would stop there if she wanted, and so we did. It was a huge tourist trap as I figured it would be and full of people like us on spring break. There were huge lines to get in the more popular places which we skipped and just walked around for awhile, enjoying the sites and eating lunch from provided food trucks.

I do recognize that they put a lot of work into making it a family friendly place, I assume to extend the length of time one stays there and most likely maximize their revenue. This included lots of artificial turf areas for kids to frolic and perhaps play a pickup came of whiffle ball.

Rather than wait in line to enter some of the buildings, we drove a few miles further west to a much less populated site that contains the largest concentration of Columbian Mammoth bones being dug out of the earth. I learned there that Columbian Mammoths were much bigger than their wooly counterparts. Not only were there mammoth bones, mostly juvenile and some adults, but also those from a camel and a saber tooth tiger cub. Scientists originally thought they died during a catastrophic flood but technology revealed the bones to be much older and not they suspect it may have been due to a drought. Regardless of the method, it is the only nursery herd bones that have been found in North America.

The kids really "dug" the place and so did I. It made me want to get a shovel and start excavating my own backyard. 

It was an even better site because it had some hiking trails which were deserted for us to enjoy.

From Waco we headed north again to Oklahoma City so we could see a few more attractions we hadn't gotten to on the first evening there. One of the more interesting stops was the Museum of Osteology. It was a warehouse out in an industrial zone chalk full of skeletons (almost entirely real except for a few noted exceptions), posed in various positions.

For some reason, bird skeletons always fascinate me, I guess because they look some different than mammal skeletons.

My kids were really fascinated with the preserved 4 month embryo seen above. 

Along with this nearly full term skeleton. They spent quite awhile gazing at both of these exhibits.

A hippopotamus skull, which I'm pretty confident, would have had extremely bad breath had it been living and I was stupid enough to be this close to the face.

This cobra skeleton really fascinated me mostly because of the lack of head structure. It is essentially all ribs with some fancy ribs on the head end.

 I have seen lots of turkey skeletons missing the head, neck and feet which is why I found it neat to see one in entirety.