Continuing what is now a yearly tradition, we looked for a way to get outdoors and away from DFW around the Fourth of July holiday. While this has generally involved herding various cats (read: children, adult and otherwise) towards Arkansas and the Buffalo River, we increasingly find that scheduling is complicated. Given schedules, we gave up on trying to include family members. We had both blocked the week off from work but with teenager work schedule, we decided to break up travel into two quick trips instead of spending the whole week out of town. This would allow for a few days in between to check on a teenager at home, keeping one of our party from fearing the worst depredations of unsupervised high-schoolers.
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We’re Going To Kansas City
Waaaay too early …
First, some back story. In the far away year of 2016, while minding my own business and taking to co-workers on a drive back from the airport, my 2007 Kia Sorento got totaled when the driver of the giant Dodge Ram behind me on traffic-jam central (114W in rush hour traffic) decided that brakes weren’t a thing and plowed into my car. Not only did that wipe out the Sorento, but collateral damage was inflicted on my first really nice road bike – my 2012 Specialized Roubaix. Thanks …
From there, I scrounged enough couch change and lint to buy a burnished copper colored AWD Kia Sportage, which was the de facto transport for almost every driving trip since. 157000 miles and planned for 100000 more – had in fact just replaced struts and shocks and fixed a minor trim issue, given this was the car we’d be taking to New Mexico and beyond.
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Make Oklahoma OK Again
…it was never that great.
Prior trips to Oklahoma have been variably successful. In 2012, while we were looking for graveyards of interest across the driveable radius from DFW, we wound up in Davis, OK, toured the area around Chickasaw National Recreation Area, explored some seriously hot and dusty cemeteries, and consumed questionable food in a variety of locations. We chose southern Oklahoma in mid-summer, which is less pleasant than say, St. Croix. Between the limited scenery, beverages, and frankly edible food, we drove home that weekend telling ourselves we would not return. And we didn’t. With the exception of stops on the way to and from Arkansas over the years, we have remained Oklahoma-free. This year, we were looking to squeeze in a quick road trip around kid’s schedules and COVID restrictions. Despite our lingering reservations, pictures of the Wichita Mountain region and taking a look at the terrain maps on Google convinced us to try one more time …
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Plague Travels Under Open Skies
In early 2020, our world was turned upside down with the news of a global pandemic. We were one of the last groups of travelers allowed on the slopes in Breckenridge that year, and as we drove home in the middle of March, we tuned into the unbelievable news. Ski resorts in Colorado and New Mexico were closing down for the season. Restaurants in most states would limit their service to takeout only. Masks, at first were discouraged. Then encouraged. Then required, depending on the state. And then fought over. Arriving home in Texas that March, we resigned ourselves to the idea that we’d be stuck at home for a while, along with the rest of the country (and in fact, the world).
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Bugs, Dolls, and No Good Food
When we first started traveling together, our time was extremely limited. There were kids at home, work obligations and school schedules. Free weekends were few and far between, and on the rare occasion there was one, we had a tendency to simply zone out and recover from life. Planning trips was a challenge. Not just because there was so much going on at home, but accounting for the travel time, the trip expenses, the reliability of vehicles – it was a monumental task.
One year prior, we had explored east Texas, which included several ghost towns, abandoned buildings, and some creepy graveyards. It was fun, educational and as required, allowed minds to unplug from life obligations. When we were planning our trip to Oklahoma a year later, we were hoping for a similar getaway. Instead of southeast, we looked our neighbor state to the north. We stumbled on an isolated farmhouse about an hour south of Oklahoma City. This would allow for time to decompress away from home while exploring an otherwise unknown area. A remote destination; we thought surely it would be similar to the east Texas trip – full of off-the-beaten-path exploration items.
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