Category Archives: Camping

Plans change again, last stop.

Okay, last vacation post!

I have been slow in sharing because, well 5 kids but I love to look back on these so I was determined to finish.

Our last stop was also one of the last State Parks we needed to visit to see them all!

We stopped at one more on the way home and now I have officially been to all of the Oklahoma State Parks!

This one was the Great Plains State Park. And it was so beautiful!

The flowers were all in bloom while we were there! I had not planned to camp at this park but learned my lesson from getting turned away from Palo Duro and called ahead to Wichita Mountains(where I wanted to camp).

They were full so we stayed at Great Plains State Park.

There is more to do and see at Wichita Mts. but I enjoyed our stay at this park.

One of the few downsides was that the bathhouse was not open yet at our campground so we had to use porta potties.

 

They also have a pretty large trail system but it is not well kept.

This part of the trail looked promising but was pretty flooded so we ended up not going on it. It is not too far from Wichita Mts. so we drove over there.

I decided to give Nick a driving break and drove.

Which means we took the scenic route and stopped every few miles so I could take pics 😉

I love all of the wildlife in Wichita Mts. Even though we had seen a lot of prairie dogs while out west my kids still loved watching them.

We stopped at the Nature Center/Museum while there. We went ahead and stopped at the Holy City while there.

I guess they hold an Easter Play there every year. It was interesting but not really for me. Next up we went on the short hike to the Jed Johnson Tower.

We had never been before and Little Bit was convinced it was Rapunzel’s tower.It was a bit muddy on the trail.She was so excited.No Rapunzel.Next stop was the Museum of the Great Plains.

It is a part of the Oklahoma Museum Network so we get in on our pass.

I love how kid friendly it is now.So much to see and do.They love the store.They have a fort outside and the people in it love to share their love of history.

We decided to give the trail system another try at Great Plains State Park on our last night there. I was giddy happy to be hiking in a field of flowers. It might have difficult to follow the trail but it was breathtaking and one of my favorite moments of the trip. Thoughtful people had left rock stacks to help you find the trail. Sometimes you are just too short to get through the cactus and yucca without the help of a big brother. Beautiful view from the top.

It was a great way to end our trip!

OKLAHOMA WHERE THE WIND COMES SWEEPING DOWN THE PLAINS!

I was not excited that our trip was coming to an end but I was excited to finally check out Quartz Mountain!My oldest two could have spent several days here!

We only spent an hour or so because I had not left a lot of time and was nervous about getting a camping spot still.But the kids would really like to go back again!

The road to get to the climbing area was interesting with a 30ft long travel trailer…

But I had taken Nick down worse roads on this trip already so those made it seem pretty easy.

At least from the passenger seat 😉

I really had NO CLUE what we were going to be able to do here but there were several areas to climb. The boys enjoyed it the most and might need climbing gear before going again.

They went pretty high…

Poor Milo, he could not make it. Such a pretty area, the park was pretty run down looking but the landscape is beautiful.

I am pretty sure this was one of the top stops for the boys of our whole trip!

Camping in Texas, CHANGE OF PLANS!

We needed a stop on our way to the Palo Duro Canyon from the Cibola National Forest so we stopped at the Mesalands Community College’s Dinosaur Museum. It was a pretty small museum and did not look like much from the outside.

I was glad that the twins stayed with Nick and went to find a park while I only paid for 3 kids to go in.

HA It ended up being really interesting though and the boys really enjoyed the exhibits. Little Bit loved looking for touchable exhibits and had a lot of fun looking for the blue handprints that let you know you can touch things!

Next stop (we thought) was the Palo Duro Canyon!

We were getting there mid week in May so we thought we should be able to get a site for a night or two.

I was wrong…

They were having an event and all their sites were booked!

I had no clue where we were going to stay that night, we loved the Palo Duro so much the last time we came that I made sure we went through there on our way home so we could stop again!

In a panic I started looking for somewhere to stay that hopefully was not an RV park(I don’t like how close together most of the spots are) and found Buffalo Lake  National Wildlife Refuge.

We decided to check it out and found beautiful open sites and hardly any people! The best part though was it was totally free with our National Park Pass! It is really cheap even without the pass but free was nice. We did not see as much wildlife as at previous refuges we had stopped at but it was still very pretty. There is not a lake anymore, I guess it was not safe so they drained it.

The only downside to this beautiful spot was the vault toilets which were pretty bad but doable.

Our black tank got damaged getting to our last boondocking spot so we could not use the rv toilet.
After backpacking with Nick and having no toilet though I am pretty thankful for anything with a door.

We stayed two nights here and got to explore a local museum(free again!) and we did get to check out the Palo Duro Canyon but it turned out to be another fail.

HA

I will share why in the next post!

It was just a good lesson in not judging a place because of a bad visit!