Mountains in Oklahoma?

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Pretend you've traveled from Ohio to Oklahoma once before. Oklahoma, like Ohio, was flat. Now you're doing the same drive again, but this time you're driving the whole way across I-44 in Oklahoma. You drove for hours, stopped to sleep for the night, then resumed driving for hours. All of a sudden, you see topography on the horizon.

Mountains?

We're still in Oklahoma, aren't we?

Mountains?

So, once I settled in to WF I drove the hour north to the Wichita Mountains. I visited a number of times, but it was this December visit (when my friends and family were facing a snow storm and I was out hiking in 50-degree weather) that jumps to mind.

The Wichita Mountains are ancient. They wouldn't tower over the landscape except the landscape is the plains and the prairie. The mountains are well-worn nubs of granite. The largest, Mt. Scott, at 2,464 feet above sea level gives visitors a view over a large swatch of southwestern Oklahoma.

The Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge includes the mountain range and gives Texas Longhorns, American Bison, and elk a place to roam open land. A line of cars stop on the road - sometimes for a passenger to photograph an animal grazing and other times because the animal wandered onto the road.

Not a lot to the post. Just a note so you're not as surprised as I was when you see mountains in Oklahoma.