Oklahoma & Wildfires

Day 2 of exploring Kevin's mission was spent in Choctaw and Norman.

This was one of the apartments he lived in and where his love for Metallica began thanks to thin walls and his neighbors playing it at all hours. 

You may or may not know, when we are in Oklahoma we like to house shop.

Here's a couple we looked at...

Didn’t like the location of this one and the gathering space was too small (yes, I creeped the back of the house and looked in the windows). But we liked the turkeys roaming the front porch and back patio.

Loved this one. It actually had two homes on the property. The main house and a guest house. Both beautiful and on 20 acres with a barn for the animals we don't have.

Sadly, it was already spoken for.

Went to Kevin's favorite pizza place.

All you can eat for $4.99 back in the day.

The girls sporting their "founding fathers" do's.

Our last day of the trip we did baptisms in the Oklahoma City Temple.

And, I found more Spring!

The purple trees were popping everywhere we went.

Should we ever actually move to Oklahoma we'll have to find out what type of grass they grow on the temple grounds because the rest of the grass we saw did not look like that.

Eskimo Joe's also has a Mexican restaurant.

Becky Beck LOVES all the Mexican food (that doesn't include sea creatures).

Had some of the best steak fajitas of my life.

Later we drove back to Eskimo Joes for Pooch to spend the rest of her dollars and try another kind of cheese fries. They basically have one for each day of the week.

While we were enjoying cheese fries and fajitas the weather was being crazy and several wild fires had started.

We headed for the airport, thinking we'd planned for plenty of extra time, but we did not plan for people being evacuated from their homes and businesses, freeways closed, backroads blocked, and traffic jams.

Every road we tried was blocked or backed up.

Kevin finally backtracked and tried swinging out to a farther backroad, and still, the traffic was crazy.

Our phones had no service (even though we have phones with two different providers) so I couldn't even call to try and change our flight. It was nuts.

I think we were all saying silent prayers, but it wasn't until we said a prayer together, asking for help to get home safely, that our phones started working and we were able to turn onto a road that took us right to the airport with no delays.

Everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief and gratitude when we arrived at our gate.

We landed in Salt Lake around 1am. I got a little misty when I saw my bed. I love traveling AND I'm always happy to get home to my own bed.

Here's a little footage of our drive to the airport.

I turned off the video right before the big red flames crossed the road 😳.