First Time Playing Banjo! Unveiling Oklahoma City's Hidden Gems 2023

Hello Bloggineers, we are at the Ellison Hotel and we're going to show you the fun things you can do in Oklahoma City. Our first stop is the American Banjo Museum. Welcome to the American Banjo Museum! This was an early banjo from 1845 and it was made by William Boucher. There's no fret marks on this banjo, so it's played more similar to a violin. And this is just a drum, so they pieced together the long wood thing with the drum. So this is 1889, just a few, 1890, just a few years after these. Look at how detailed they are, they all have frets, they started having designs, and they started being used with classical music. The early banjos don't have a back, it was more like a drum. But then they added the resonator, which you can see the back there, and then on the front there's holes that can amplify the sound. This is one of my favorite banjos because you can see little pictures of Venice, the canals, the buildings. Look, that banjo has a little dragon at the back. These are the bluegrass banjos, which happened after the jazz ones. And what's interesting is that they kind of got a more simpler design, like the jazz ones were all gold and extravagant, but these look a lot simpler. This is the only Gibson bass banjo, and it was made once because they played it for a few events. Okay, it wasn't that big of a hit, so the museum has it. This banjo was made about the Beatles, so it says Yellow Submarine on it, there's a submarine on top, on the head. And on the back is a depiction of the four Beatles. This gallery features women banjo players. Taylor Swift is a banjo player, apparently. One time when Steve Martin was playing a show in Oklahoma City, he came by the museum and was so impressed that he donated this banjo to the museum. He was given this banjo when he won the Mark Twain Prize. This is what the banjo looks like when it's taken all apart. He smashed it on the ground and broke it, and then it came all apart. Now we're going to learn to play the banjo. So on your thumb, put that there, just like that. Oh, that's much more comfortable. Is that the Foggy Mountain? Wait, no. Yeah, it's Foggy Mountain. Index on the second to last string, in the middle of the top string there, the bottom. That's a great way to start. Like that? The Kermit song is this. And that is the American Banjo Museum. My favorite part was, of course, seeing all the different banjos. My favorite banjo, though, was the Steve Martin one. I love seeing the banjos, and I didn't know that there were different variations of it. There's four-string, five-string, six-string, but I think the most normal one to play would be five-strings. And my favorite part is here, playing the banjo for the first time, even though I suck at it. You don't suck at it. But I want to play it again one day, maybe learn it. Thank you, Mr. Lucas, for the tour. Now we are at the Museum of Osteology. They have different sections in this museum. This one's on Oklahoma wildlife. Oh, here's scavenger hunts for different animals. We're trying to find the New World monkey that's hanging by its tail. Oh, yeah, see? Brother found the monkey hanging by its tail. It's a spider monkey. This is the dog section. Look how cute the chihuahua is, even when it's just a skeleton. It's the size of Camu, almost. I found some skeletons that, even though the animals are dead, they still... You can see their facial expressions, like this one over here. And also my favorite, the Sumatran orangutan. Look how it's hunched, and then it has a really... The mouth extends forward so much. It looks like an old man. That is a human skull, Homo sapiens. That's us, from 30,000 years ago. And then our ancestors, one of them was the Homo erectus, from 300,000 years ago. This is a hippo. Up there, it doesn't look that well. It looks pretty dirty. This one, because the horn area is a different color, it looks like he's wearing a hat. I found the heaviest mammal. It's an elephant, weighing at 16,500 pounds. From the gift shop, you can pick up these owl pellet dissection kits. What it is is owl poop, and inside, there are bones of the owl. You can use this chart to identify which part it came from. These are the tweezers that you would use to pick out the bones. While brother's doing the scavenger hunt, I'll do this. Whoa, it's small. These are not made for my hands. I'm going to open up the owl poop. By the way, the poop has been sanitized, so it's safe. Whoa, whoa, look at that. I'll try to be gentle so I don't break the bones. Actually, owl pellets is not owl poop. It's regurgitated parts of prey that cannot be digested by the owl. Good thing I read that. Here, I found a little something. Okay, we need to identify this. I'm not completely sure, but it looks like a vertebrae to me. I found another. This is maybe the jaw. That's my best guess. If you look closely, there's actually so many bones. This is a really unique activity. Usually, at these kinds of museums, they'll have archaeology kits that are just those magic play-doh things, and then there's just fake bones inside. But this is actually really... It seems really real. That's real owl throw-up. And that is the Museum of Osteology. My favorite part was the scavenger hunt because it basically gave you a tour of the whole museum while also getting crabs. I enjoyed the owl pellet dissection because I... Well, I never thought I'd touch owl regurgitation. It was sanitary since they sterilized the pellets, and I got some really cool rodent bones to take home. This made me feel like a true osteologist. And now our friends at Family Travel Go will show you RiverSport OKC. Kale, where are we? We're at RiverSport. Cash and Kale will be your guides. Let's go rock climbing. There's so many types of rock climbing. My favorite one was the one with the punching bag. Oh. The rock climbing was a ton of fun. I really loved the simulated ice climbing wall. Our youngest son had a blast at the Youth Zone. They had many activities geared for his age group. Next, we headed over to the whitewater rafting area. It was our favorite, but Kale was not big enough to do it yet. Woo-hoo! Our first lap was adventurous but smooth. Yeah! Next, we were harnessed in and able to walk on multiple levels of the Sky Trail. Once we reached the top, we went down the slides. Two of them were over 72 feet tall. Then we went out on the river where they offer paddle boarding and kayaking. After kayaking, our youngest son, Kale, got brave and decided to attempt some of the harder climbs. Thank you, Family Travel Go. You can check out their channel at the link in the description. We give it 1,000 thumbs up. Now we're checking in at the Ellison Hotel. Ellison! Here we go. I'm going to give you a tour of our room. Starting here, we have a coffee maker, a safe in a drawer, a mini fridge. Here are extra pillows, robes. Up here is a handheld steamer. Over here is a flat screen TV. Okay, it's a guest services book. Currency. The local currency used is U.S. dollars. They even explain what a Do Not Disturb sign is, in case you don't know. And we flew into that airport, Will Rogers. This is neat. Over here, we have two queen-sized beds. Okay, look. So see how these are all cards? These are underneath the glass and these are above it. There's postcards for us. Here is a dining guide. Oh, okay. So you answer these questions about what district OKC are you. And based on that, it will suggest dining, shopping. And here's a map. The decor is neat, too, in this room. The bed frame looks like a suitcase because you're traveling. And this is a little living room area. The artwork, this one's nice. It's the eye test chart. It says it's 5 o'clock somewhere, somewhere in the world. And you only live once. Let's go in the bathroom. And I'm going to give you the tour of the bathroom. Over here is a sink with bar soap. A toilet. Toilet. Okay, okay, okay. Are you okay? Yeah. Over here is a shower covered in gold. Soap, conditioner, and a shampoo. And look at all these towels down here. We're going to show you the other parts of the hotel. There's a rooftop pool on the fourth floor. And it's closed right now, but its season will open on April 7th. So by the time you watch this, it will probably be open. We're in the lobby area, and I spotted this massive bookshelf. Not only does it have a million books, but it makes a picture of a woman's face. And she's reading a book. Now we're at the Oklahoma Firefighters Museum. This is a replica of an old firehouse. So if there was a fire, then someone at any location would go to this box. They'd insert a key and then pull the thing that was inside. At the fire station, the firefighters would hear rings according to the number that was on here. So there would be two rings and then one for 21. Whoa! Oh, okay. That's two. And then there would be a pause. This particular hand pumper is from 1870. Wait, the water would be in there? Water would go in here. Now, depending on where you were at and what the circumstances were, they could fill this with buckets. Or they could take this, flip it over and drop it in water, and it would actually suck the water up and pump it. These would fold out. They folded in because of narrow roads. That way they could get them in. Well, they would take these out. Now you had... You could push it? You could have six to 12 men pump it. And generally, if they had the manpower, there'd be a guy on your side and a guy on my side, and we would pump it because it's very hard. This is a horse-drawn steam pump. So when they would fight a fire, they would hook the hose to a water source. And back then, cities were near water sources, so that was easy. And then it could pump 750 gallons a minute. The Dalmatian dogs, actually, they weren't used to sniff out humans in fires. They were just used to keep the horses company. I didn't know that. This was the fire chief's buggy, and it was white to symbolize that it was the fire chief. So not everything in the fire service was red. And that is the Oklahoma State Firefighters Museum. My favorite part was when our guide made the ringing sound. I liked learning about how firefighting worked back in the day, and I think this is the first firefighting museum that we've been to. So I pretty much didn't know anything. It's cool to learn about. Our next stop is the Oklahoma Railway Museum. Whoa, look at these seats. Whoa. Three, two, one, catch. Three, two, go. Oh, no. And that is the Oklahoma Railway Museum. My favorite part was being able to go up to the train engine because I have never done that before, and it's very cool. This museum is completely free, and there is an inside part, but we only explore the outside. Now we are at the 45th Infantry Division Museum. Here you can flip this giant book to see many pictures of the 45th Infantry fighting World War II. The 45th Infantry was from Oklahoma, and it fought more battles than any other division. And that is the 45th Infantry Division Museum. We breezed through in five minutes, but really you're supposed to spend way more time here. The museum is completely free, and if you talk to the folks there, one of the guys fought in the military that we talked to. He was pretty cool. Outside the museum, you can see many military vehicles such as tanks and airplanes and cannons. Stay tuned for more videos.