We didn’t do as much hiking as we had hoped in Oklahoma. Despite being a holiday weekend, Ryan had to work, and we spent a lot of the time finishing up the last-minute touches of the blog so we could launch it.

Throughout our time in OK, there were constant winds. We were surprised by the amount of wind that occurred there. Every day, the wind was blowing consistently throughout the day, making the RV rock like a boat even with the stabilizers set in place to limit swaying.

It’s no surprise why the RV park we were staying at had a storm shelter. Oklahoma is susceptible to tornados because of how flat the land is in the area. There are a limited number of trees and mountains to block the gust of winds. 

Out of curiosity, I read a little bit about the wind in the area. According to my reading, people from Oklahoma believe it is much windier than the city that is known as the Windy City, Chicago. I’ve been to both places, although we were only in Chicago long enough to be transported via shuttle bus from the airport to a hotel and back, but I can say that in our experience Oklahoma was definitely much windier.

Because it was so windy, it was also a little chilly there. Even though the temperature was in the 60’s, it felt closer to 40 degrees with the wind chill. This was part of the reason we didn’t go on as many hikes as we initially thought we would. We don’t mind the cold, but we just didn’t like the windiness that accompanied it. 

We did one other hike while in this part of the country. It was a rather short hike, too, because we were cold. We hiked the Jed Johnson Tower Trail to Central Peak within the Wichita Mountains. It was a short and easy hike with very little incline throughout the majority of the trail.

We enjoyed it because it was a very lightly trafficked trail. We only saw a handful of people along the way, which made the time spent at the tower more enjoyable. Typically along our hikes, there are several people at the point of the main attraction, whether that be a summit, a waterfall, or a tower. It was nice to have the area to ourselves so we could enjoy the beautiful view of our surroundings. 

After admiring the tower, we continued on the trail to what we thought was the Central Peak Mountain. The AllTrails app guided us towards a mountain and as we got to there the trail was a bit confusing. We both saw different potential paths up the mountain but neither were clearly marked. Since they were within 10-15 feet of one another and we could see each other the whole time, we decided to each take one of the paths to see which was better. 

Part way up, Ryan decided his was not the intended path. Mine seemed more plausible, but as we continued our climb upward, we realized that the trail was likely covered over by the large rocks that we were climbing. It looked as through the rocks had tumbled downward, covering the trail. At this realization, we decided we should turn around and head back down. 

If the rocks had tumbled down, we don’t know how sturdy they are currently.

As we made our way over the rocks, Ryan joked about feeling like the kids climbing the mountain to the Grinch’s lair. Once he mentioned it, I couldn’t un-picture it. He was right; it did feel that way. Especially when we accidentally stumbled upon what looked like a cave with a nicely made bed in it. It looked like the home of an animal, but luckily the animal was not there at the time. We don’t know if anything did in fact live there, but we didn’t want to stick around too long to find out. We quickly scrambled our way back down the mountain and headed back to the truck.

We may not have made it up the mountain, but we did experience an incredible view from the highest point we reached. Considering this excursion ended happily and safely, we are now able to look back on it and remember the fun and enjoyable, albeit risky, adventure that we embarked on that day. 

Once we returned home, we launched our blog!