Packing, more packing...time is a ticking. We worked on the van literally right up until our first scheduled trip. I was still running wires, solving plumbing problems and putting the finishing touches on the van late into the evening. It became readily apparent that despite all of my years spent camping and backpacking that we were making our best guess as to what to bring. Equipping the van with its dedicated camping supplies was something I had never really considered and so began the "Shit We Forgot" list. It was extensive. But, we remembered the dogs, the dog food, the coffee and the whiskey...so we were good.

We set off on a Saturday morning late enough to swing by REI for some last minute items before getting out of the city. We were heading to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Reserve in southwest Oklahoma. The Wichitas are special to me. I remember as a kid scurrying over boulders and sliding down rocks, thinking I was in the most extreme place on earth. Little has changed except the rocks seem a little smaller. The Wichita Mountains, once the home to the Comanche and Kiowa, rise several thousand feet from the rolling prairie. The 500 million year old pinkish quartz granite domes show eons of erosion and sparkle in the hazy light that envelopes the Wichitas year round. The Refuge was established in 1901 reportedly after the infamous Comanche Chief Quanah Parker invited Teddy Roosevelt to a wolf hunt in the area. Roosevelt was so taken with the landscape that the the land and unique habitats were marked for conservation, ultimately creating the oldest managed wildlife facility in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service system.