Not as flat and dusty...but just as windy...as you'd expect. The Oklahoma panhandle did not disappoint. It was beautiful sunny days and cold cold nights. But the experience was one of a kind. I took a close friend along with me on this trip. He hadn't done much hiking, no camping in decades, and certainly no scatological expeditions. Getting to spend time with a friend in this somewhat remote land and see wildlife that neither of us are used to back in NEOK was rather rewarding. For 5 days, we hiked around looking for poop and all sorts of things that were unfamiliar. It was an adventure in itself to explain what we were really after on this trip.

I had a few animals on my list that I really wanted to find. You'll find pronghorn in the panhandle. These are the fastest land animal in the western hemisphere. They're odd looking. And I really wanted to find some of their poop. Alas, we only saw a herd of them along the highway headed home. Porcupines live in the panhandle, too. While I did get some good poop pics, we didn't find any actual quill pigs. In northeastern OK, we have whitetail deer. We have those in the panhandle, too. But there's another species of deer, mule deer. Thankfully, we got to see lots of mule deer does. Unfortunately, we saw no bucks. But we did also check off mule deer from our turd list! We saw scaled quail, pheasant, and more yucca and sagebrush than you can shake a stick at.

I had hopes of finding badger, prairie dog, and a few other animal poops. But I'll count this trip as a success in both adventure and poop.

Stay tuned for updates from my adventures and check out the shop to see how you can share the gift of humor, prank a friend, or enjoy a new perspective on nature with a postcard, calendar, or book.