Explore OK {Wichita Wildlife Refuge}
Last week. Or the week before. It all blurs together these days! Sometime recently we headed a couple of hours south to the Wichita Wildlife Refuge to celebrate my birthday.
Corbett brought his T-Rex. I’m here for it.
Before we headed out I did lots of Pinterest searches related to hikes in the area. I should have downloaded a couple maps, because the trails aren’t marked well and we went the wrong way a couple of times. My main objective was to get to the Valley of the Boulders, which we did and it was totally worth some back tracking.
You guys – my kids are so big! It used to be so much easier to spot the mom in the picture!
If you are headed to the refuge for hiking, this shot shows the “Apple and the Pear” and the Valley of the Boulders. When you reach where you can view the Apple & Pear (top left on Ridgeline), just start climbing in the valley!
Valley of the Boulders, Charon Garden Wilderness Area of the Wichita Wildlife Refuge ?
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The trails weren’t exactly marked and we did a lot of back tracking. The boulders were huge and the openings between them had steep falls that were a bit concerning when you have 5 kids going 5 different directions. At one point my youngest and I got a little stuck. She told me she wished she had packed her Spider-Girl costume and that the adventure was so fun because it was dangerous. ???, ??????? ?????. I didn’t get pics of her climbing because I was too busy making sure my little Spider-Girl didn’t slip down a 20 foot crevice as she boulder scrambled. It was a very good day indeed.
In order to stay inside the refuge we had to camp without access to running water or bathrooms. This meant a portable toilet, a dog, and 7 people in our 25 ft trailer. It meant using wet wipes to ‘wash off’ for 3 days. Sometimes it is easy to look at pictures of someone else’s adventure and assume it was all glorious sunsets and effortless fun. We had an incredible adventure, but to experience it we had to accept that some not so glorious things came with it. All that to say I know if I wait for a tidy, effortless adventure I might be waiting a long time…or more accurately missing out on a lot of ‘could have been’ epic family moments.
We had a blast camping for my 41st birthday or as Hudson called it “the 20th anniversary of my 21st birthday”. Our campsite was right next to a trail that led to Mt. Baldy. We could run the trail and up the ‘mountain’ in 15 minutes. Once on Mt. Baldy we could see for miles in every direction…and nearly every time we were at the summit no matter which direction we looked we couldn’t see another person. Two of the morning we hiked the trail in the dark, climbed to the top and soaked in the sunrise. Basically a dream birthday for an outdoor loving introvert! Happy birthday to me!
