What I Did On My Spring Break: Day Four

Scandalous: We spent Day Four of our Spring Break vacation out of town.

You know, the operation of a place-based blog, it's a funny business. Last year I boarded two planes - one was bound for St. Louis, the other for Sacramento for a trip to Napa Valley. Upon reporting about these trips on my real estate at various social media sites, I fielded several questions asking that if by leaving I was signifying that I'd finally fallen out of love with Tulsa.

No, that wasn't the funny part. This is the funny part: I really did feel guilty. As if traveling doesn't help me write about my hometown, because it does. To compare and contrast is a valuable exercise, especially when I discover ways in which Tulsa can't be compared to or contrasted with other places.

Miami, Oklahoma, serves up a few of those ways.

We don't often get to see our son's godparents, thanks to the facts that they live in Miami, Oklahoma, we live about 80 miles away in Tulsa and all four of us lead very busy lives. So when we get some time off and aren't swamped with other projects, two or the other of us make our way down the turnpike to camp out at the others' house.

Except this time we didn't take the turnpike. We took Route 66, which meanders from the heart of Tulsa, a city of 386,000, northeast to Main Street Miami, a town of about 14,000.

Surprisingly, the trip on the old highway didn't take much longer than the amount of time we usually spend on the turnpike. Plus, the drive on Route 66 was much more interesting than traveling 70 miles per hour through nothing but pastures of old barns and grazing cows.

Like downtown Tulsa, Main Street Miami, built on Route 66, is home to several thriving businesses, historic places and restoration projects. The Coleman Theatre, opened on the cusp of the Great Depression, is one of my favorite stops. I also love this little book and gift shop at the center of one of those big refurbishing jobs, Chapters, at 31 N. Main. I make a point of stopping in every time I'm in town.

In fact, Chapters is my No. 1 source of stationery.

Yes, I'm a blogger who still uses stationery. And I'm proud of it.

I think.

Miami is also home to some big, beautiful houses.

See how pretty our son's godparents' house is? If you're looking to move to Miami anytime soon, I'll just have you know that it's for sale.

Yeah, that's right. Our friends - actually, thanks to their godparent status, they're honorary family - are coming home to Tulsa.

I'm excited about their new boomeranger status, don't get me wrong. It's just, what do I do when I run out of stationery?

You see, in some ways, Miami and Tulsa, they just don't compare.