Chickasaw National Recreation Area

Last week we were able to fill in the Oklahoma sized hole on our map! Our friends over at Our Moving House had visited here earlier this year so I added it to our bucket list too! The Chickasaw National Recreation Area is located in the Arbuckle Mountains (who knew Oklahoma had mountains?!) and truly is an oasis in the desert. Trees, springs, and lakes are everywhere. We could only be there for 2 nights and didn't do the area justice at all but it whet our appetite. 

The first place we went on our day of exploring was the Travertine Nature Center. It's free (SCORE!) and has live animals as well as many mounts. We spent over an hour wandering around and the children did their Jr. Ranger books. Ethan was thrilled because they gave him a 1 page scavenger hunt and he got a badge too!

This bee hive was captivating! The pipe on the right leads outside so they could collect nectar. We loved watching them work!

And what is a nature center without turtles? Ethan wanted to watch them all day.

Many buildings in the area are made of rocks, all local and in perfect shapes to build with. 

We thought it very clever of them to build the Nature Center over the creek!

If you find a bug, you must play with it :).

From the Nature Center we "hiked" about 2 miles to see 2 different springs. The path was wide and flat and extremely easy walking. There were many little pools and waterfalls along the way and they were all crystal clear.

You can't see it well but we spotted an armadillo and were able to get within 10 feet of it!

Antelope Springs. Fascinating how the water simply flows from the under the rock!

So clear and delicious!

Buffalo Springs had a neat little pool around it.

Bubbles would randomly appear at any time. It was rather hypnotizing. 

Of course they had to taste it too!

People were diving off these falls so the creek must be deep there. We certainly didn't try it!

Typical expressions! Micheal is "Not doing anything but smiling!" and Emily howls, "He's not being nice!" Our next stop was the Chickasaw Cultural Center. It's huge and we were all hot and tired so we didn't pay for the tour but we did enjoy our time there.

There is a Cafe there so we had lunch. Eldon and I both got an Indian taco with grape dumplings and pashofa. Delicious!

Michael and Makayla shared the bison burger, which was also amazing! The prices are very reasonable and I'd highly recommend lunch here if you're in the area!

It seems like we should have been learning about the Chickasaw but the children wanted to feed the fish so............ :)

Turtles and huge catfish were in the pond!

The children all got THREE badges instead of one.

In order to get their badges, one of their projects was to pick up 10 pieces of trash. While painted rocks are a fun hobby, it IS illegal to leave them at National Parks so technically it was trash. We saved them to hide elsewhere.

And we even found a penny press so we could get our favorite souvenirs!

I bought a jar of this too. It's amazing on crackers with cream cheese!

Later in the evening (after all the grouchies had naps) we headed to the Arbuckle Lake and went swimming.

The water was bathtub warm!

Our campsite.......we had 50 amp and water hookups but no sewer. This was site 43 but several others were also very spacious. It's fairly easy to get around, if you are used to driving a big rig :). The road into the campground is curvy and hilly but nothing extreme. There's a lot of trees and big rocks though so it's a great idea to have a spotter when you're backing into your campsite. 

Water shoes are a must if you go to lakes and rivers much!

The trail behind our campsite went down to the lake and the children played in the woods every chance they got. They also got bitten by chiggers and mosquitoes quite badly too so be sure to use repellent.