On the Road with Kids

When you are on the road with kids it’s always fun to have some stops to just stretch your legs and get out of the car for a bit. But also…when you have 16 hours of driving you are trying to do, you don’t want those stops to be super long. Since we were trying to get from Hot Springs all the way to Mesa Verde in a day and half if was key for us to have a couple fun stops along the way.

Our first stop was in Oklahoma City. We found out that in Automobile Alley they did a fun “Lights on Broadway” display. So we stopped and grabbed dinner at NashBird (yum!) and walked Broadway enjoying the various light displays.


One of the things we did as a family before we embarked on this journey was spend a few hours in our local library researching. Where all did we want to go? There were plenty of places in Oklahoma and Texas that we would have loved to stop but not all of them met our criteria of fun, quick stops for this trip. Plus we know we want to get back to Oklahoma at some point so we passed on some of the bigger stops we’d like to make. That said, Big Texan Ranch seemed like a great stop to make for lunch. We weren’t ready to tackle the 72oz steak challenge but we did enjoy some good steak! And the girls loved there cowboy boot cups and cowboy hats!

What were we interested in seeing the most? We enlisted the girls help to do some research on some fun stops to make. Mak found Cadillac Ranch in a Wacky Roadside stops book. As you can tell our family had a great time tagging these half buried Cadillacs! It was a perfect 30 min stop and we all enjoyed the experience. If you are ever driving through the top of Texas on I40 be sure to stop by!