It was cloudy with spitting rain as we drove the motor home out of our camp site at the wildlife refuge. In fact, the main reason that we are leaving is the predicted storms heading into Oklahoma. While we won't be avoiding them, at least we'll have a phone signal and internet to track the storms at our next camp site. Once again, we're in a severe weather advisory! We must be crazy to be spending so much time in Oklahoma during the spring storm season!
After a two-hour drive north, we arrived at our new campground. Now we're in central Oklahoma, near Arcadia Lake in Edmond, Oklahoma. This city-owned lake has two camping options, and we chose the less busy Scissortail Campground. Arriving on a Monday, we had our choices of sites. Once again we think we got the best one. We have good shade throughout the day and a 50-amp electrical site.
This campground is unique in several ways. One is the water hook-up. Spigots are scattered throughout the park, but none of them are easy to access. One of our criteria for selecting our spot was its proximity to one of those spigots. By using our four water hoses and our y-splitter, we're able to even have water hook-ups at this spacious site.
The other unique part is the check-in process. During busier summer months, a gate guard will help to find camping spots available. But during spring months during the week, we were left to figure out this board on our own.
The payment envelopes include a green tear-off slip that should be slipped into the correct site number slot to insure your spot is reserved. An empty camp site is not always available, as Edmond residents can pay and thus save spots when they slip that green reserved pay slip into their favorite slot. In our 4.5 years of travel we've never seen anything quite like this system.
We lived the first 50+ years of our lives in Oklahoma, so we know well that spring weather can be hazardous. When we started full-time RVing, we planned to stay clear of the spring severe weather season. But here we are in the heart of it! We would have several days with a rainy view out our front window, and the local weatherman pre-empted all the regular programming to give minute-by-minute updates on the latest storms.
The wall clouds that spawn tornadoes often make for beautiful skies.
But we know that these lovely clouds can be treacherous. At the campground we are surrounded by trees, so we couldn't see the unusual cloud formations the evening of an outbreak of severe weather. Denisa's sister took these pictures from her backyard a few miles away from us.
The first full day we were here, more than two dozen tornadoes were reported in various parts of the state. We were relieved that Edmond was not one of those various parts. Remind me again why we are here now?
It's because we have family activities planned! Even the threat of high winds, hail, and tornadoes wouldn't keep us away. We can drive to see either of Denisa's sisters in minutes (rather than hours) from our spot here at Lake Arcadia.
Our youngest son's house is also minutes away. It was nice to be close enough for a quick lunch, or a group dinner with his wife. Denisa snapped these pictures of the beautiful irises that are blooming at their house. So spring does mean some good things in Oklahoma.
Spring also means babies, and we have two pairs of Canadian Geese parading their goslings around the lake.
Those fuzzy goslings were usually out in the mornings when Denisa made her one-mile walk around the campground circle.
We never got good pictures, but we were also camping with a big flock of cardinals that always flew from their perches just as Denisa tried to take their picture. We almost always spotted at least two deer in the woods around our site when we wandered from our site.
So after we survived the first couple days of severe weather, we decided that maybe it's not such a bad idea to visit Oklahoma in the spring after all. Because the real reason we are here is still to come. . .
Our campground at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge is right on Quanah Parker Lake. In fact, we can walk to the north shore of the lake without leaving our camp site. This premier location brought us lots of foot traffic during the weekend when neighboring campers walked through our site to get to the lake. We noticed that a sign was posted at the campground entrance that the 23 electrical sites were all full by Thursday afternoon. By Friday all 90 of the camping sites were full. It was a busy campground during the weekend! By Monday morning all the weekenders went home, and we were back to our peaceful piece of nature. But it was time for us to leave as well. Before we left, we decided to take advantage of the peaceful waters to get our kayak out on our lake. But that big bank of clouds coming up might mean we need to paddle fast.
We had the lake to ourselves on a weekday morning. The wildlife were enjoying the solitude as well, as we paddled around the edges of the water. Our first wildlife sighting was this pair of Canadian Geese standing in the shallows.
This is possibly the only circumstance that we will be able to view a herd of longhorns while we are sitting in our kayak on the water.
This group was coming to the lake for a morning drink.
The water lily stems are just now growing long enough for the leaves to peek up through the surface of the water. We found that the big drops of water on those new leaves dance like diamonds as we rowed past in our kayak.
We love bird watching from the kayak, where we can stealthily approach from the water. This great blue heron was intent on fishing, and let us get quite close for a clear picture.
Then he made a fast poke into the water. Score! He came up with a fish flopping in his beak.
We were fascinated with his fishing technique, and watched as he relocated to a new area. With that brightly-colored bobber on the lower left corner, it looks like that heron was using a new fishing technique to catch his breakfast.
He finally flew to this perch on the fishing pier nearby. We're used to seeing these big birds standing in the water, so it's unusual to see one hanging on to a metal rail. When we looked at the picture later, we saw that we had caught two birds in the frame as a little one swooped into the picture on the left.
That would be one of the many swallows dipping and diving around the fishing pier where they are nesting. This pair stayed perched on a cement post while we stealthily glided in the water towards them.
As we made our circle around the edge of Lake Quanah Parker, we came to our backyard. If you look through the trees you can see our motor home parked in the forest. What a great camp site it has been!
We've had some rain during our five days here, and that has slowed down some of our hiking. On the map we see that there's a trail that goes from our campground to Little Baldy (pictured below), but we never got the chance to make that hike. I guess we'll have to come back!
While kayaking, it's always fun to sneak up on turtles. This guy let us get quite close, and we could even see his reflection in the clear water. We like our stealthy kayak, and Mark is great at bringing us quietly up close.
The clouds were building, and by the time we got the kayak out of the water it was completely overcast. So we loaded up our inflatable Sea Eagle kayak, and headed back to the motor home. It's moving day, so after pulling up the jacks and emptying the tanks, we are on the road out of the wildlife refuge. It looked like it could rain any minute as we passed the best known mountain in the refuge. This is Mount Scott, which is famous for the great views from the top. Normally this is an easy summit because there is a 3-mile paved road to the top. But heavy rains have compromised the road and it is closed to automobile traffic. Now we are seeing cars parked on the side of the road as people are forced to hike up that road to get those views from the top.
That vista of Mount Scott is our last view of the Wichita Mountains as we leave the refuge. It's a sweet good-bye to our time here as we continue our journey northward.
After driving to church in the nearby town of Cache, Oklahoma, it seemed fitting to explore "The Holy City" inside Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. We wandered through this special area, starting with the "Christ of the Wichitas" statue.
We also found that the native stone has been used to build elaborate sets made to look like Israel during biblical times. An Easter Pageant has been taking place here since 1926. That makes it the longest continually running Easter Pageant in North America.
We're here not long after Easter, and we can see signs of the crowds that have visited recently. This large set of building facades was built by the WPA in the 1930's, and is leased from the federal government by a private organization to make the Easter pageant possible. It's quite a view from the top as Denisa is standing on the upper level of the town square on this beautiful afternoon.
Crowds bring their own chairs and blankets to cover the surrounding hillsides to watch the pageant on the two Saturday evenings closest to Easter Sunday. Local actors portray the story of the life and death of Christ . . .
and of course His resurrection.
This Sunday afternoon we're also meeting a friend for a little snack. Steven and his kids ran the half-marathon together at the Oklahoma City Memorial run this morning. They were four of the 28,000 runners that make this one of the biggest events in the state.
After running 13.1 miles that morning, Steven deserved that heaping bowl of cobbler and homemade ice cream that the Meers Restaurant is famous for. We did not deserve that much cobbler, so we shared our dessert.
The Meers Store and Restaurant is a famous landmark just a few miles from the north gate of the wildlife refuge. We came here earlier in the week for lunch.
That day we ordered the "Seismic Burger." The menu describes it as one pound of 97% lean longhorn beef topped with jalapeno peppers, bacon, cheese, sweet relish, mustard, dill pickles, tomatoes, purple onions, and leaf lettuce. We shared it, and still had half a burger to take home. We were stuffed after our burger meal, so that's why we had to make the return trip for dessert on another day.
To make ourselves feel better about our over-indulging food habits, we went on another hike on our way back to our campground. Our destination is Jeb Johnson Tower, peeking out between the trees in the picture below.
We could see the tower as we continued our hike towards this landmark. We're happy to report that we are still seeing wildflowers that the bison haven't mowed yet.
We were disappointed that we couldn't climb to the top of the tower. But standing at the base still allowed for some good views of its namesake, Jed Johnson Lake.
After five days, this is our last evening camping at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. Most of the evenings we have been at Quanah Parker lake, just behind our campground, to watch the sunset. This last night we got the best show of the week. That's Denisa's silhouette standing at the edge of the water in awe of the splendor stretching over the sky.
The colors in the sky were mirrored in the edge of the water as our Sabbath came to an end. We have continued our commitment to find a local church to worship every Sunday morning. This Sunday we started at church, but we also got to worship God's wonders as we wandered through other parts of Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge on a beautiful sabbath.
We are really enjoying our time at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge! For most travelers that stumble onto this park, it is an unexpectedly beautiful collection of rock-covered mountains in the middle of the Oklahoma prairie. It's a gem!
We came here many times before we retired, but we really didn't appreciate what a gem this place is tucked into southwest Oklahoma's landscape. This day we are on the Kite Trail, where our hike takes us beside a little creek . . .
that suddenly opens into a beautiful canyon.
We took a less-traveled path close to the edge of the canyon wall because we kept taking pictures. This is called the "40-foot-hole" on the trail map, and it seemed deeper that that to us.
When we first spotted the waterfall in the picture above, we knew that was our destination. We kept getting closer . . .
and closer. If you look in the very center of the picture, you can see Mark's blue-shirted figure standing on the rocks high above that waterfall. That could only mean one thing.
He would soon be scrambling down the rocks to stand right beside the falls!
Denisa much prefers to stay high and dry. From his perch by the falls, he can look back down the canyon to catch Denisa on top of the wall. She's in the upper left hand corner of the picture below.
We continued the Kite Trail over its rocky course until we got to the source of that creek. Mark is standing at the spillway of Lost Lake, at the northern end of the trail.
We've decided to make this into a loop hike. So after completing the 1.1 mile Kite Trail, we walked on the road until we got to the Lawrence house. Built in 1912, this was been a shelter for hikers and wanderers for the more than 100 years. The plaque out front reads that it was built "as an open refuge for passing travelers" and it is on the national register of historic places. We see this curious knobby-stone construction in buildings all over this area.
The house is at the trail head of the Narrows Trail, and we soon found the creek-crossing that the ranger warned us about. Because of all the recent rain, the only way to continue this trail is to get wet. We rolled up our pants and shed our shoes to get across the swollen creek. Denisa has made it half-way across by this picture,
but she still has another knee-deep wade in the cold water to get to the other side.
After we get our feet dry and our hiking boots back on, we can continue our hike into this narrow canyon for more views.
We have wandered into more of God's wonders today!
Our hike takes us up, and then back down to the creek. Perhaps during the dry summer it would be pleasant to ford a smaller creek and continue down into the canyon. But today this is the end of the trail for us.
On the return hike, we can look back down through the narrows to see the rocky water crossing we'll have to make again.
Hiking on these rocky trails is beautiful, but today we were reminded of the dangers here. We visited with another hiker and got some great advice because he worked for years as a professional guide on trails like this within the refuge.
He especially likes the rock climbing that these walls are known for, and his book, "Oklahoma Rock" is available at the visitor center. But Tony also told us about the day he was hiking by himself and got bit by a diamondback rattlesnake here in the refuge. It was a day he'll never forget. After hearing the details of his story, he walked more carefully on the trail the rest of the day.
We have been watching the ground all day, as this is perfect weather for a snake sighting. But something else caught our eye high in the sky. This blur of clouds had a strangely colorful center. It looks like an upside-down rainbow, but we haven't had any rain today. Perhaps it is the forewarning of the rain that is in our forecast for the next couple days.
By the time we made it back to the car, we had another six-mile hike under our feet without even one rattlesnake sighting. In fact, the only wildlife we saw on these trails were the collared lizards. We had to take more pictures because they were wearing their best turquoise-blue lizard skin suits today.
It's been another great day of hiking here at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, where trail heads are just a few miles from our beautiful camp site. This is a hidden gem in Oklahoma that many travelers don't know about and too many Oklahomans take for granted.
