Henry Doorly Zoo

So last year we stopped by the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha on our way back from Kansas. We enjoyed it so much, I knew we would have to go again. We couldn't stop on our way down due to having trouble finding accomodations, so the plan was to stop on our way back. We left around noon so that we could meet an old college friend of mine in Kansas City to have dinner. That part of the trip went really well, except we didn't want to leave. This meant a late start to Omaha, but it should only be a few hour drive. Except remember that detour I mentioned in June, well the river was still flooded and the I29 was still closed! I was not willing to take I35 to Des Moines and backtrack, it seemed like way to long of a detour. So using the google map app on my phone I started off taking backroads. Stupid me, we ended up driving almost all the way to Lincoln, before being able to cross the and get to I80. So we ended up getting to our hotel at around midnight. I was exhausted. But undeterred we got up early and went to the zoo. We spent the whole day there! I really love this zoo!

Pictures

So the day before we left, we went out to take some pictures of K with his grandma. These were mostly taken in the alley behind the pharmacy where I was working. I loved the rock-work, limestone bricks the building were made of.

Just for fun!

My aunt Margaret made the clothes for Dorothy.

My favorite!

One last visit with the cousins...

We spent our last weekend back down in Oklahoma. We just hung out with family and had fun. K even got his cousins out to swim with him. I only had pictures of K and R, by the time everyone else came out I had to go in because I was getting a sunburn. K really enjoys being with his cousins, so it was so worth it.

County Fair

The county fair happened to be while we were there. I have great memories of the county fair. My sister and I used to put in lots of entries, drawings, chocolates, anything we could enter in. There were rides, the rodeo, dances, watermelon feed, etc. We had so much fun. Well thing have definitely changed. There used to be 3-4 buildings with entries and a separate building for 4-H entries, now there is just 1 building for all of it. It made me sad. Another thing that changed is the rides, gone are the carnival rides. Now they have blow-ups. We had a free ticket for K so I took him, I didn't think he would have too much fun but free is free. I figured vinyl blow-ups with 100 degree temperatures, not much fun. I was wrong, K did have fun. We went in the late evening so it wasn't so hot and he stayed until closing time!

More cooling off!

This time we went to the pool in Independence. I got some really good pictures and we had fun while staying cool. I think this is one of my favorite pools.

Children's Park

There is this amazing little children's park in Bartelsville that has amusement rides for really cheap! I mean like 25 cents a ticket and the the big rides are 2 tickets! We had so much fun last year we had to come back. It was very hot though, which made it a little more unconfortable. K had fun anyway, we just worked hard to stay well hydrated!

Time to cool off!

It was very hot while we were visiting Grandma's. In fact I do not think the daily high was ever below 100 degrees the entire 5 weeks we were there. So we went swimming as much as we could. K and Grandma went to the local pool a few afternoons every week and on the weekends we made a couple of special trips. This pool was located in Bartelsville. It is actually two separate pools, the first one was closed when we got there initially and was going to open in few hours. So we headed over to the other pool, which the pool part was actually closed there as well, but the splash pad was open. It was kind of fun, but very frustrating too as about every 5 minutes it would shut off. It was supposed to be just a push of the button to get it back going, but it didn't work that well. Fortunately it was free, so we stayed for about an hour before heading over to the other pool. The second pool was pretty fun.