I needed a weekend away with my boy. Just the two of us.
Money was tight, and I didn’t have the time for a ten-hour drive to the nearest real mountains in New Mexico or Colorado. I wanted a jaunt, not an excursion. So I did my research. I plotted the course. I booked the campsite. And I did what every good dad does. I pulled my kid out of school a day early and pointed the truck at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge on a Thursday.
It’s an easy drive over the Oklahoma border, and this part of Oklahoma looks like nothing I had seen before. I had to apologize for a lot of the bad things I’d said about Oklahoma before I knew this part existed. We’ve been back many times since, all of us.
We crossed the cattle guard on the way in, and I explained to my son that it was there to keep animals in or out. Probably both. We figured out the reason soon enough. Bison. Actual bison, standing in the road like they had somewhere to be. The speed limit out here is low, and now we knew why.
We set up the tent fast so we could catch the sunset from the top of Mount Scott. You drive right up to it, and the whole prairie opens under you. I couldn’t believe this was Oklahoma. Even my rarely-impressed twelve-year-old didn’t reach for his phone. He just stood there and looked. This was exactly what we needed.
That night was s’mores and a running battle with the raccoons over a bag of Doritos. We lost. In the morning we woke early and took one of the marked trails. The fog was still rolling across the lake before the sun came up. Somebody had told us there was a waterfall out there with a pool cold enough to knock the wind out of you.
A couple hours in, we heard it before we saw it. We rounded the corner, and there it was. No Niagara. But it was beautiful, and it was ice cold. We stripped down to what was decent, dared each other, argued about it, and finally jumped in together. I have never seen a human being levitate the way my son came back out of that water. To say it was invigorating would be an understatement. We dried off, got dressed, and kept hiking.
I crossed birds off a list I’ve been keeping for years. It had the vastness that New Mexico and Colorado do so well, but at a third of the drive.
On the way back, we stopped in Cache, the only town out there. There’s a gift shop attached to a diner. Dust an inch deep, local art that I can only call eclectic, and cat poop in places that made me stop touching things. I’d go again.
We spent that night stargazing, poking around the old dams, shooting a little astrophotography, and having the kind of dad-and-son talk you remember years later. I think it’s my job to put my kids in front of that.
The skies were clear and dark. The galactic center came up over the granite. Andromeda was easy to find with the naked eye. And it was dead quiet.
But the better sight that weekend, for me, was the unobstructed view of my son’s heart. That’s the good stuff.
If You Go
The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge sits just outside Lawton, about a three-hour drive from Arlington. Just over 59,000 acres of ancient granite, mixed-grass prairie, and freshwater lakes, set aside in 1901. About 22,400 acres are open to the public. The rest is sanctuary.
There’s more out here than hiking. The refuge holds around 650 bison, brought back in 1907 from fifteen animals when they were nearly gone for good. The elk herd runs about 800, descended from twenty animals shipped down from Jackson Hole in 1911. Add the white-tailed deer and the Texas longhorn, which have been here since 1927, and you understand the low speed limit. There’s a prairie dog town. There are tarantulas that cross the road like they own it.
If you fish, there are so many lakes out here you’ll lose count. You need an Oklahoma license, and you fish with a pole, nothing fancy. Quanah Parker and French are good places to start.
You can kayak the lakes. You can climb the granite in Charon’s Garden. You can drive to the top of Mount Scott and watch the whole prairie open up under you. It costs nothing to drive through. Camping is by reservation through Recreation.gov, and we stayed at Doris Campground, which has both tent and RV sites.
There’s a waterfall out there with a pool cold enough to take your breath. I’m not going to tell you which trail. Go find it.
One more thing. Bring your own water. There is none out there to drink, and you’ll want more than you packed.
