3 Days in Tulsa OK
Cheap flights, here we go. As long as a flight is less than $100 round trip, we won’t mind taking a plane to discover a new place. Here’s our three day itinerary in Tulsa OK. Even if you’re spending only 24 hours, a day trip, 48 hours, or a weekend in Tulsa, you can just mix and match our recommendations and find the trip that’s perfect for you.
Contents
Click on the links below to read more posts about our trip and for guides:
Here are some of our previous posts:
Have limited time in Tulsa? Here’s our itinerary if you only have time for a day trip in Tulsa. Feel free to use the second and the third day itineraries as well, if that is what you are in the mood to do on your day trip to the city.
If you only have one day in Tulsa, the one place you have to visit is the Philbrook Museum of Art. Not only is it a great art museum, the gardens in the back are worth every penny of the entrance fee. In fact, start with the garden when you visit. The gardens are meticulously landscaped and have so many great photo spots.
One could easily spend more than 4 hours just looking at the art and walking throughout the gardens. The garden also has swing sets, and is a perfect spot to relax. When visiting during spring, take note that there’s a lot of pollen flying around which could trigger allergies!
The indoor art museum has two floors with multiple rooms housing different exhibitions. Half of the first floor’s rooms are from rotating exhibits, so you can have something to look forward to the next time you visit.
Parking is free, but take note of special events that may cause the museum to close early or for the entire day. When we visited, the museum was only open when we arrived so we had to go straight to the museum after having lunch at Nola’s.
A big free park located near the Philbrook, you can run around and admire the garden landscapes. There’s loads of squirrels to watch and a small playground and wide open spaces for your kids and toddlers to run around in if you travel with kids. The playground is really small, so it may get busy from local families hanging out with their children.
We would recommend visiting Woodward Park after visiting the Philbrook since it is open until dusk. The Philbrook closes around 5pm and if you visit in summer, it does not really get dark until after 7:30pm so you will still have time to explore.
Across the street from Woodwark Park is the Tulsa Garden Club. Instead of paying an entrance fee to the Botanical Garden, you can opt to save a few pennies and see the garden and greenhouse here. Clean and immaculate, the gardens are small but the walkways and fountains make it a really great spot for photos.
You can walk inside the greenhouse but they are only open for certain hours daily. We arrived early in the afternoon and they were still open. It is a small greenhouse – maybe 5 minutes inside will do, unless you like looking at specific plants that grow there. It is hot and a bit stuffy inside, something to take note when visiting in the summer.
Right in front of the Tulsa Garden Center is the Tulsa History Society and Museum. This museum focuses on the history of Tulsa, and has rotating exhibits. Be prepared to pay an entrance fee to get in, but even if you don’t opt to see the exhibits, the museum is beautiful from the outside since it’s housed in an old mansion.
See the pattern here? This particular area of Tulsa has huge mansions – a nod to the oil barons that helped create Oklahoma into the state that it is now.
If you have two days in Tulsa, do the suggestions in the one day in Tulsa OK post above. However, here are more ideas on what to do for your second day. A lot of them are free or cheap, with just a few dollars for the price of gas for the rental car or for admission.
The Gathering Place is a huge and free park with some parts still under construction as of publication. The second part of the park extends all the way across the river, with more playgrounds and green spaces for people to enjoy.
A completed first phase of the park has a lake where you can rent kayaks, and a lot of walking trails. The trails wind through the park and one trail brings you over a bridge where you can peer down at the cars below. There are also playgrounds for all ages, with beautiful theming. It was a shame we did not bring our child, as he would have loved playing there.
Go to the Gathering Place on a weekday. While there was ample parking when we went there on a Friday morning, the park’s main parking lot does close if it gets too full. You may park in another lot, which also has an entrance to the park, but is a bit farther down the road.
Hungry? A cafe and gift shop is located in the premises, and there are a lot of tables in an airconditioned area designed to look like a cabin. The coffee is amazing, and so are the desserts!
Did you know that historic Route 66 goes straight through the heart of downtown Tulsa? You too can drive through this road, but be aware that the roads are bumpy! We were shocked when we drove through and felt as if the roads were not maintained as much as they should be, given its popularity.
There are a few stores that you can stop by and park on the side of the road, but only a small strip is interesting and memorable enough to detour to, a few of which we will talk about below!
If you had to stop anywhere for souvenirs in Tulsa, head on over to Decopolis. Forget all the other stores, just head straight to this one. The prices are good, the selection of items are fantastic, and have something for everybody, even the children! There are quirky areas to get photos of, the store smells really nice, and there’s candy and other nostalgic items available too. The store is huge too!
Across the street from Decopolis is Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios. You won’t miss this store, it has a huge statue of a cowboy slash astronaut that you’ll see as you’re driving past Route 66. The store is small, the prices are a bit on the expensive side, and there is a bit more branded stuff than actual Tulsa souvenirs. It is still good to look inside and peruse, but we ended up empty handed when we visited.
The Golden Driller statue by the Tulsa State Fairgrounds is free to see from the road or you’re free to also park by the fairgrounds to take photos up close. Painted gold, the driller shows the beginnings of Tulsa and Oklahoma, with oil driving prospectors that way.
If you’re wondering why we didn’t put a lot on the second day, we allocated a few hours to go to a mall near our hotel – the Hilton Garden Inn South. I also had to work a few hours in the morning so we were not able to leave the hotel until close to 11am and had lunch at the mall before doing the activities we mentioned above.
My husband mainly wanted to get an Oklahoma Sooners jersey, and in a quest not to pay a lot of money for a jersey, we went and looked at Target and retailers like Marshalls to get him his souvenir. Spoiler alert, we managed to buy one and bring it home!
Travel is all about making it your way, and when we create these itineraries, while we hope that you follow them, it’s all about customizing them to your needs and interests as well.
Here are some other places that we considered visiting but didn’t get to go to:
For our third and final day in Tulsa, we decided to go to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, a quick 50 minute drive from Tulsa.
You can read more about our day trip to Bartlesville on the post below:
Not really. The Blue Whale of Catoosa is a quick 15 minute drive from the airport. It is a good detour if you are heading to or from Tulsa airport. Plan to stay a max of 30 minutes for photos and exploration unless you are planning to swim in the murky water by sliding on the fin slides or jumping off the platform.
It is a quirky and good spot off historic Route 66 but there’s really nothing much to do in the area unless you want to drop by the Hard Rock hotel and casino. But we would still recommend visiting because it is too darned cute.
Include the Catoosa detour with a trip to the Tulsa Air and Space museum, which is just off the Tulsa airport premises, or visit the Blue Whale on your last day before heading to the airport. It is open to the public without a gate, and is located just off the road. Park, get out of the car to take pictures, and head back to your destination if you’re in a rush.
Aside from eating in chain restaurants like Chipotle and Cracker Barrel, we went to 3 other local places to fill our tummies with food. We are not really big on spending in restaurants, hence the chain restaurants, but we do try to go to local places to try new things.
On our first day, we ate lunch at Nola’s. We liked the food so much we decided to dedicate a whole post about it. Read more about it below:
I love trying Thai and Asian restaurants whenever we travel. It is a way for me to stay connected to my roots while also traveling in far flung places along the way. There are a few Thai places close to our hotel, but most of them are fusion restaurants. Eating in a restaurant that offers just one cuisine is the best bet – they can concentrate on making their food as authentic as it can be.
We did not have any issues with walking in – there were plenty of seating available and the theming was quite good. We know we made the right decision when the restaurant asked us for the spice level of our order! That’s how we knew it was legit!
We already talked about this hotel in our Is it worth it to visit Tulsa post, but the Hilton Garden Inn South is 20 minutes south from the downtown area, and is very close to Broken Arrow. When we visited, we managed to redeem 10,000 Hilton points per night, and the hotel suited our needs with free parking and with our gold status, gave us free daily breakfast.
It is a bit out of the way, but the redemption rate was a winner. We had a rental car anyway so it just cost us the price of gas. When we visited, gas prices were not at the $5 per gallon level that it was (as of June 2022).
So, are you now excited with what Tulsa has to offer? Busy planning your trip to the city and ready to jump on a cheap airfare deal? Hopefully this post has helped you with your travel planning to Tulsa, and let us know how your trip goes by leaving comments below. We would also love to hear if we missed any hidden gem finds in the city that we missed!
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