NF State Park

Down through the years I've discovered that I have wayyyyy too many hobbies. So, naturally some will (and must) come and go. But hiking and exploring nature trails has absolutely always stayed at the top of my list. Sometimes the most challenging thing is trying to find someone who is willing to go with me. So if any blog readers out there are also fellow nature enthusiasts... hit me up!!

Ranelle said she would go with me on my latest adventure to find out exactly "where the red fern grows". So we took a weekend trip down to West Siloam Springs, OK at Natural Falls State Park.

I would go on and on about what awesome kabobs Ranelle made... but to be honest, I don't really even remember if they were good or not. I'm sure they were, but I had suddenly developed the worst sickness and really didn't even feel like eating, though I forced myself to.

Chillaxin' :)

Excuse all the pictures of the kabobs... XD

We set up the tent, but we never actually slept in it. Rather, I slept in it for 10 minutes when I was so sick, but after I started throwing up, I had to go sleep in the car. Which is where we spent the rest of the night due to flash-flooding and tornadoes. Yes, we like to really keep it on the adventurous side!

We finally asked some other hikers to take a picture of us... Or rather, they offered to take a picture after they watched me sprint from my spot where the tripod was and try to make it in the picture within the 10 seconds. Yeah, I nearly killed myself trying to get over there in 10 seconds. Haha! 

The whole time were were exploring, I was doing more videoing than anything. So I also used my GoPro to snap a few stills.

On the ledge overlooking the falls.

At this point we were already going against the rules... um... oops!

Yeah, whatever... who cares! We weren't supposed to get off the board walk at all, but as you can see in the next few pictures that I really bent the rules and got in the water and walked behind the falls. 

It was actually a tab bit scary because I had to walk on a small ledge in the rock and keep from slipping off into the pool. I'm not really sure how deep it was right under the falls, but from what we could judge, it looked quite deep. Plus, I had several spectators on the boardwalk who were watching me trespass... and I really didn't want to cause a splashing scene. Haha!

When I got home that evening, we had the most beautiful sky over our house. Which is actually really rare to see since we live in a valley. But the storm had left us with a really beautiful sky the whole way home.

-MarLeahJoy

P.S. - hopefully I will make a video of the whole trip later... I haven't even looked at the footage, but surely I can pull off something :)