Day-Trip

An unexpectedly good museum about forty minutes south of Broken Bow, and the best indoor day trip from a Hochatown cabin. The headline piece is a full mounted cast of Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, the Oklahoma state dinosaur, which is a genuinely large carnivore that stops kids dead. Beyond that the collection covers Native American art from across the Americas, with pottery, textiles and carvings. It is compact and free to enter, so a rainy afternoon costs nothing but the drive. Worth the trip even when the weather is fine.

The internet’s version of the North Shore day trip is: drive up, take a picture at a beach, buy shave ice, drive back. Four hours of highway for one photo. Here’s a better version. Run the island clockwise - Kailua first, North Shore last - and everything lands at the right time. The water at Kailua is calmest in the morning. The Koolau mountains behind Byodo-In and Ho’omaluhia are only clear of cloud early. The green sea turtles at Laniakea don’t reliably haul out until afternoon. Go counterclockwise, like most people do, and you miss all three. ...