Landing my Maule on a dirt firefighting strip in the Kiamichi Mountains

I have ridden my dirt bikes in the rugged Kiamichi Mountains of SE Oklahoma for many years, and ran across this dirt firefighting strip in the middle of seemingly nowhere. It is probably 20 miles to the nearest person and further than that to a town. I am pretty sure the forest service made it as a staging area for fighting wildfires.

So I decided to find the strip with from the air and land my Maule on this rugged patch of rock and dirt. I was returning from a business trip to Hope, Arkansas and found this strip from the air. After making a low pass to check out the dirt runway and scare the cows off the landing area, I landed and parked. My airplane was covered in green slimy cow poop. I walked around a bit because there is not much else to do here – no rivers nearby to fish, no transportation, and no cell phone service.

After about 15 minutes of walking around, I jumped in the Maule and headed home. When I got back to our hanger at Wiley Post Airport, my dad gave me a hard time about all the cow poop under the wing. He and I had to clean it all up the next day.