Did you know that the town of Blanchard has a splash park?

I might not know if I didn’t live near it.

We’ve been to others, and we’ve been to bigger, but I sure like this one.

It’s got what I like in a spash park. It’s wet and fun, and it’s in a super-safe place. I feel good about letting my kids run and play here. There’s benches around it, and there’s even a covered picnic table right next to it – perfect for hosting a splash park birthday party!

I also like that since it’s out of the way, it’s usually not crowded. Sometimes we even have the whole area to ourselves. I like that…I think the kids like having other kids to play with. Either way, we win!

So, I like traveling around Oklahoma. I like it so much that I thought I’d write about it.

A couple of months ago, my family went to Lake Optima, which, in my opinion, was an incredible adventure. Came back home and looked it up, but I couldn’t find much. That’s when I decided to get more information about interesting places in Oklahoma out to the public – including the places the normal travel guides don’t talk about.

I’m planning on going around to different areas all over the state and review them for you. Me (Regina, that is) and Ben (that’s the man of the place) and our three kids are already going places, so why not share what we find out? We’ll go to museums, lakes, events and other attractions, then let you know how it went. We’ll also fill you in on good letterboxes and geocaches in these areas, if you’re into that. We’ll tell you how it really is.

That’s Okie Tourist. Hope you enjoy it.

My family visited Lake Optima in March 2009. We didn’t plan the trip; instead, we went to see relatives in the Texas Panhandle, and while there, we hit geocaching.com and a couple of letterboxing sites to see what we could do for fun up there.

There were a couple in Texas, but the biggest clump of geocaches was located north, in Lake Optima. I was intrigued, since I’d never heard of Lake Optima. My brother-in-law said that it was a failed lake, and had never reached capacity. Sounded interesting, so the next day we packed a lunch, four adults and seven children into two vehicles and headed up the highway.

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