Some of the accounting PhD students decided that during spring break, we should go hiking at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge and eat at Meers.
Wanting to get more bang for our buck in driving out there, Sarah and I decided that we would go out there and camp the night before, hike in the morning and then meet up with everybody else for lunch at Meers.
So, as soon as Sarah got home from work on Friday, we left and got down to the campground at about seven. The only problem was that the campgrounds on the refuge are first come, first served and there are no reservations (except for large groups). We asked the lady at the ranger station if there was any camping nearby and she said there might be some about ten miles east, back the direction we had come from.
We started back that way and once we had reception on our phones started trying to find this campground she was referring to. We drove the ten miles and couldn't find the campground (looking around or using our phones). We did find that there is a state park about thirty miles west of where we were (twenty miles west of the original campground).
By this time, the sun was setting, and I was getting worried that we wouldn't find a campsite at the state park either. This caused me to drive faster, which worried Sarah because sunset is when more of the animals are active. As we drove through the refuge again, we saw elk, deer, and bison. After we were a few miles west of the refuge, we came to an intersection. Straight ahead was a dirt road (and the most direct path to the state park), while the cross street was a paved main road. Our phones told us to take the main roads, but we would have had to travel three times the distance than on the dirt road, so in the interest of saving what little light we had left, we opted for the dirt road. Luckily, that turned out okay as we made it to the state park okay and were able to find one of the last available campgrounds, which had a beautiful view the next morning.
We set up our tent in the dark and eventually got a fire going and cooked our dinner. My favorite part was dessert (s'mores), which got stuck in my beard.
We met up with our friends Ammon and Lindsey that used to live in our ward the next morning and went for a hike with them.
After the morning hike, we drove to Meers to meet up with the accounting PhD students. Unfortunately, we had lost track of time on our hike and due to Saturdays being really busy at Meers, they couldn't wait for us. Fortunately, Sarah had invited a friend from work (who used to be in our ward) and his family to join us out there. Ben and Merrilee got there with their kids just as we were getting to the front of the line, so we enjoyed a delicious meal with them, including a seismic burger (that Sarah and I shared) and peach cobbler.
After lunch, the six of us hiked for a couple hours and we were all really impressed that neither Eli nor Ella complained for the whole hike.
During our hike, we saw some turtles hanging out on a log in the middle of a river.
Their kids were pretty tired once we finished the hike, so they headed back to Norman, while Sarah and I decided to go for one more hike. We saw this tower and decided we would hike over to it.
We're not sure what the wildest wildlife we saw was--the longhorn cattle or that bearded man.
