Kayaking among the wildlife

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.