Sisyphus, Orchids and John Wayne

 Wednesday we visited the Myriad Botanical Gardens and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. There was also a brief walk around Bricktown for lunch, because we were right there, and why not?

At the Botanical Gardens the kids enjoyed the (free) outdoor Children's Garden as much or more than the huge Crystal Bridge greenhouse. It was lovely, but if I had known that's what the tickets were for, I think we might have just enjoyed walking around the outside paths and looked up tropical and desert plants when we got back home.

The Children's Garden was less garden and more playground, but as you can imagine, that was just fine with the kiddos. If we'd wanted a little extra culture, we could have hung around and listened to a Shakespeare in the Park production that was getting ready to start in the outdoor amphitheater. I thought maybe we were already pushing it with culture for the day, so we kept on walking.

We drove over to Bricktown for lunch, and were delighted to see that Wednesdays are $5 lunch day at the Spaghetti Warehouse. When you've been eating at museum cafes for a few days, a $5 lunch sounds like an amazing deal.

We walked along the canal for a bit, pausing to get a couple of very important pictures- you know, the kind of pictures that every third tourist probably takes. Specifically, this one:

In case you can't tell, the kids are trying to help this man roll a big stone ball up a metal incline. They didn't succeed. We did have a nice lady offer to get my picture with them, so there is now one more piece of photographic proof that I was along for the trip.

We ended our Wednesday with a trip to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, which I (perhaps stubbornly) insist on calling the Cowboy Hall of Fame. I got it in my head as kid, and I just can't change it now. I think that means I'm getting old.

They have built a wild west town, Prosperity Junction, there in the museum, complete with low lighting and sound effects. The flash from my camera makes these pictures look an average room, but the mood was actually much more like an evening outside when a thunderstorm is about to roll in from the west.

There were about 15 separate buildings, from a railroad station, to a mercantile, to a saddle shop. We pretended to learn in the school, listened to Mim read a 'sermon" in the church, and had a poker/go fish game in the saloon. The kids really entered into the spirit of the place. Zaya pretended to purchase from or otherwise transact business with the imaginary people in every locale.

We also visited an interactive room with costumes, saddles and a little log cabin. Zaya is holding his "six-shooters" that he bought in Prosperity Junction. Why? I have no idea. He also pretended to shoot Indians, which is certainly not something he learned from me. We decided to make it pumas. It's not politically correct, but at least it's not genocide.