Mid Fall Crisis?

Well I have once again reached the time of year what I think I'm going to go crazy and run away if I don't find some 1.) Mountains, 2.) Snow, 3.) Snowy Mountains, 4.) some crazy adventure. Training for a triathlon helped contain me through the summer, but when I wasn't able to compete in it, I stopped training and have been itching some other adventure.

A friend and I decided two weeks ago that were going to go camping somewhere that had some sort of mountains if it killed us. But we only had one day to go, and we wanted to keep it within 3.5 hours of Dallas. I searched all over the internet and finally found a place in Oklahoma called the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge. There are very few pictures of it anywhere, but we decided to give it a shot.

My friend is a pilot, so he's gone a couple days a week, home a couple days, etc. We set out very early on a Friday morning to make the drive up there. Considering we weren't really expecting to be there much longer than 36 hours, the amount of gear we brought was quite ridiculous; it filled the back of the truck, and I had to fold up one of the back seats to get the rest in.

We hadn't gone more than 10 miles before my friend started feeling cramps in his stomach. By about two hours in, he said we needed to stop and get some medicine because he wasn't feeling well at all. When we were about 20 miles from the mountains (more about the mountains later), he suddenly said, "Pull over now!" which everyone knows means throw-up time. After tossing a cookies for awhile he decided he was fine and we should continue on... he wasn't. To make a long story short, we got there, he was so dizzy and sick he could barely stand so I had to haul the enormous amount of gear from the truck to the campsite, and set everything up.

He was alternating between chills and fever so he decided to go lay down in the tent. I was able to set out and do a little of bit of hiking around and took a few pictures. The mountians were really incredible. Imagine the City of Rocks sitting in the middle of the Oklahoma plains and you get the picture. There are wild elk, bison, and tons of praire dogs. We're hoping to go back with the family in a couple of weeks if it doesn't get too cold. Here are a few pictures I was able to take.