Mouth Of Maurice

A Dose Of Medicine Park

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Dose of medicine

“Who wants to go to Oklahoma and ride some bikes?” Natty would say frequently in a crescendo.  This repeated often in Trey’s head, as the camper made its way across the country.  We were headed to Medicine Park, OK, from our previous stop in Albuquerque.  We knew very little about the riding area in Medicine Park, but the name definitely had a ring to it.  We questioned, “What kind of medicine would we need” after riding there?  Exploring new riding locations is something that we love to do, but often times it comes with a price.  Either we ride the trails in the wrong direction or we never find the marvelous trails that we were actually looking for. The sweet spot comes when someone wants to show you around.  In this case, we had Kye Cordes, an Oklahoma native, and a fellow ZOIC brand ambassador.  Lucky for us!

We had the idea to take a screen-shot of our potential driving route from Arizona to Georgia.  Natty posted the image to Facebook to see whether or not we had any friends that lived along this route, who might want to meet up and ride?  Kye was one of the first people to comment on the photo.  He brought up the idea of the Lake Lawtonka trails in Medicine Park, which, for reference, is about an hour and a half southwest from Oklahoma City.  Kye said, “We have the hardest trails in Oklahoma and a lot of rocks”!  So, we hopped onto the googlewebs and did some research about the trails surrounding Medicine Park...located in the Wichita Mountains. However, there was very little to be found.  But, we put our trust in Kye and arrived at Medicine Park on Tuesday May 9th, just in time to go for a ride!

 

Kye was able to line up a spot for us to park our camper for a couple of days.  We parked where the “Mountain Bike Club of the Wichitas” stores all of their tools for trail building!  It was a perfect cozy spot with two tree-swings made from cloth and a wooden deck.  There was even a downhill section of trail that ended right there at the camp spot. Our truck camper “Maurice”, barely fit, but we were snug as a bug and happy as a jug…full of beer!  After we set up camp, we were ready to go out adventuring on our bikes with Kye.  Have we mentioned how old we are?  This is only important to note because Kye is 15…he races regularly and podiums…he’s good… and we’re old-ish, sometimes racers, who no longer train regularly.  Off we went—Straight up the mountain, up and over, and up and over, the ROCKS!  There were shark fin rocks everywhere!  Kye wanted to show us all the goods that Medicine Park had to offer. He even introduced us to a quick ride down an old abandoned waterslide that use to be part of a water park back in the day.  It was an awesome mountain bike ride, but we had our Asses handed to us, for sure! It was one of those rides where, when you’re done, you sit like a rag-doll, and hope that people will do all things for you, like hand you a beer and massage your sore muscles.  As we were headed back to camp, the local outdoor store called Base Camp Adventure Outfitters had a group of guys gathered around outside lounging in camp chairs. One of the guys was Kye’s dad. Perfect timing to meet some locals and set down our bikes for a few minutes to talk trails.

(Kye keeping it cool and Natty busy breathing - Thanks to ZOIC for making us look rad.)

The next day, Kye had school, so we were on our own to explore the trails some more.  We planned to ride trails that we had not ridden the day before, and we really wanted to ride the downhill trail that ended right at the campsite. The riding was pretty much the same as the day before; lots of rocks that needed serious upper body strength to maneuver, but the trails had beautiful views that made all the hard work, sweat, and complaints totally worth the ride.

 

(Trey riding the old school water park @ZOIC)

Natty seems to have a knack for angering snakes.  We were on our way back to camp, when we came across a boulder field.  Natty’s legs were spent, so she decided to walk a section of this rock garden instead of risking a crash.  Out of nowhere, a snake came out from the side of a rock and snapped at her rear tire!  She screamed like it was her last day alive on this planet.  Trey thought maybe she had actually been bitten.  It was a very intense and serious moment for a simple green-racer snake; known for eating rodents, not fully grown humans.  Now, we were both super paranoid, waiting for another close encounter with a reptilian.  The downhill section back to camp was a lot of natural fun.  It encompassed everything...rocks, roots, and outstanding views.  There’s nothing better than ending a ride with a fun downhill that spits you out right at your front door.

There’s not a whole lot to say about what happened between Medicine Park and our next stop that took us to Bentonville, Arkansas! We’ll wait and share our shred stories from that location in our next feature article.

If you’re not already following our travels across the country, you can read more here - “From the Mouth Of Maurice”.

(Trey and Natty)

Having fun, looking good and feeling protected all because of these guys!

     

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