Those out of the way places

[KirkVining]

After our discussion on the Applachia Long Trail on another thread and as a way to get something non-political to talk about going, I thought it might be interesting to ask people to post the most beautiful out of the way places they have visited in the US - not the Grand Canyon or Pacific Coast Hiway kind of stories, but those little out of the way places discovered in the course of life that are little known. For me, there are three in particular that come to mind, let me start of by posting one of them:

Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refugee
SW corner of Oklahoma

This place is a destination for those who are into cameras and wildlife photography that offers fairly easy trails in very wild country. You can do it by RV, or do it tent style in campsite accomodations. There is also a daytrip automobile road where you can also shoot wildlife from paved scenic areas. If you want to really get down and hike into areas to do rock climbing, wilderness camping and the like, you have to get special permission first, but the best way to do the place is to stay at one of the official USF&W campgrounds. They are all adjacent to the various trail systems. If you are going to camp in a tent, bring powerful repellant and mosquito nets, and choose your site well, keeping an eye out for ant hills that you will reget staking a tent over. The campgrounds are not very large, so call in and reserve a campsite. For hunters, there are elk and deer lotteries, and there may be others as well if species get overpopulated. If you win a lottery, unless you are such a bad shot that you couldn't hit the water if you fell out of a boat, you are pretty much guaranteed your limit and you will be allowed to go into parts of the refuge that are strickly off limits to the public.

These "mountains" are really the final point that the tip of the great glacier of the last ice age reached, and are composed of the rocks and trash pushed forward onto a very,very old worn down mountain range by the glacier as it moved down the Great Plains, so they are a combiniation of 4 billion old outcrop mixed with glacial boulders. They are probably in the 1500 ft- 2000 ft range, if that, but because this is the only mountain range in the Southern Plains, the views from the mountain tops are spectacular.

The area embodies the meaning of the words "starkly beautiful". The mountains are pretty much treeless, while the lowlands are forested. If you want to see what this country looked like before we got here, this is the place. It is one of the most visually compelling places I have ever been, especially in the spring when the mountains and valleys become covered in wildflowers, many of which are the last of species close to extinction. Unless you want to prove how tough you are, it is not advisable to visit from July 1 to Sept 15. It is extremely hot in those months in the area, and the more vile creatures are in great abundance and unless you are in an RV, sleeping in the evening is almost impossible due to the heat and you may find yourself, for one example, bitten by insects that bore holes in your legs and lay their eggs to hatch. Not fatal, but very unpleasant. In general this is not a place for wimps - The spring is the best time to visit, March 21st to the end of June, but there is always a danger of extremely violent thunderstorms, tornadoes and flash floods. Winters are fairly mild, but it can also turn cold and nasty, but the violent weather subsides in that period. Even if you camp in the Fed campgrounds beware - this place is as wild as they come and there are rattlesnakes, scorpions, mountain lions, and a whole lot of nasty insects and deadly spiders, and some of the most vicious ants on earth, like those ants you see on TV that Indians staked people they didn't like over. Never sit on small rocks and such without kicking them over or you could be parking your ass on a nest of scorpions. Watch your footwear - if ya'll remember our other thread about scorpions this is the place I got bit by one that crawled into my hiking boot.

History has made this one of the most remote areas of the US because most of the land in the area is Federal Reserve of some sort or another, much of which has never been disturbed, covering a portion of Oklahoma about the size of the state of Rhode Island. The Refuge itself is teeming with the prairie wildlife ecosystem that once covered the entire Great Plains, and the wildlife is so abundant it is impossible to miss. Buffalo, elk, prairie dog towns, wild birds of all types including bald eagles make this one of the best camera safari destinations in the US. The Refuge is about 50,000 acres, and it in turn is surrounded by the Ft. Sill Military Reservation, and numerous Comanche reservations, so it has been immune to the kind of edge development and cattle raising that has hurt so many other wild places. There are two very interesting small towns nearby, Medicine Park, and Meers, both hard luck towns so be careful, but both also Old West towns stuck in 1890's time. Here are directions and such:

http://wichitamountains.fws.gov/