Black Mesa State Park, Kenton
Saturday, 29 August 2020
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| today's route |
Today we covered a little more than the length of OK's panhandle which itself is 181 miles long - more than 1/3 of the length of the state.
It started with our early morning walk at Boiling Springs State Park. Gracie stopped our forward progress so she could roll around on her back for awhile, and a nearby tent camper who was taking his first stretch of the day saw us and said, "Somebody's not taking their walk very seriously." Which I thought was a funny view on the situation.
That was followed by an encounter with a clueless fawn. As we were driving out of the park, we saw a fawn standing on the side of the road ahead of us. Of course I slowed down to a crawl but was sure it'd bound away when we got closer. But it didn't. It just stood there until our hood was actually alongside it, and only then did it decide to head off the road. Mama was over in the bushes eating breakfast the whole time and scarcely paid any attention. But maybe they can read: I saw signs saying the state park is a wildlife refuge so hunting isn't allowed.
We stopped in Woodward so I could walk the dogs before we began the drive across the Panhandle, and I came across this building for sale.
It needs some work but it's still a beautiful building. I hope someone can think of something to do with it and has the money to invest in making it proud again. It sits on half a city block of land of its own.
From Woodward, we continued out of town on US 412, the road we'd taken from Mooreland yesterday. And we stayed on US 412 all the way to Boise City, at the other end of the Panhandle. Easiest directions yet.
In the town of Fort Supply, we passed the Fort Supply Historical Site. I understand it's not open every day of the week but is worth the visit if you can get there. It was built in the late 1860s and was a supply post for the Red River War of 1874. When it was decommissioned it served as the first state mental institution in 1907 and later as a prison. It's probably happier now as a historic site.
I kept seeing signs all along the road saying this road was "Governor George Nigh's Northwest Passage." Apparently, one of the times he was governor, he talked the Legislature into allocating money to upgrade this highway - aka State Highway 3 - that runs from Broken Bow, in the far southeast corner of OK, up to Boise City and then north to Colorado. Critics called it the Road to Nowhere, which must not have pleased the folks living along it, but Nigh got it done.
I passed a sign saying Log Cabin Corner, just as if I were at a town, but I didn't see a town and it's not on the AAA map, so who knows what that sign was about.
I passed through mostly scrubland with plenty of cows. But where farmers irrigated I saw fields of cotton and hay.
I passed through Slapout (that's a town). In the 2000 census it had a population of 10. It was started as a store built during the Depression by a man who said he had nothing else to do so he thought he'd start a town. The world needs more creativity.
The nice thing about US 412 is that, though it's actually a 2-lane roadway, it's got plenty of passing lanes. It's heavily used by semis and, of course, by local folks. And at Boise City you can pick up highways into Colorado or down to Dalhart, TX.
I passed open land, grazing land, and any trees were cedars and/or junipers.
Along the way highway signs told me often of turns I could take that'd take me down to Texas towns and, occasionally, north to Kansas towns.
I saw oil wells, both working and non-working, wind farms, a large gas compressor station.
I knew I was driving toward OK's highest point (Black Mesa, at 4,973') and kept expecting to see mountains on the horizon, but all I could see were clouds.
I passed a building labeled Balko Public Schools - Home of the Bison - and the town of Balko is labeled on the map, but I saw zero town. Just that school building. Not even a gas station or convenience store. A little ways down the road I saw several houses sitting on their various farms, but I'm still not sure where the town was.
I passed a big field of corn. I'd noticed that many of the crops I'd seen had been planted in a circle, because that's the arc that the irrigation machine allowed. I know that's why because I saw an irrigator in action. Out here, no irrigation, no crops apparently.
At Bryan's Corner I saw a sign advertising caliche for sale. I
knew there was caliche around here.
We stopped for a break at a roadside table in the town of Hardesty and I found this historical marker.
Note that Old Hardesty lasted only 20 years. But I suppose that was typical of the towns in those times - built for a purpose, then abandoned when that purpose stopped existing.
I think I've mentioned it before, but there are a lot of cemeteries in Oklahoma, and every last one of them seems to be noted with a highway sign. Not their names, just that you can turn on this road to get to a cemetery. After a month of this, it's started to seem odd.
I started passing large fields planted with a grain that looks like yellow maize. Later I figured out it's sorghum. Sorghum seems old fashioned to me - something my older relatives would use - but I've learned it's still used in cereals for people and in food for animals. Live and learn.
Coming into a town, I saw a sign saying, "Welcome to Guymon, An American Original." I'm not real sure why they're claiming that as a slogan or nickname or whatever. It looked like your basic town to me. I will say their Main Street still has brick streets and are hard to drive on (good old asphalt).
I saw several signs saying something about No Man's Land, but I could never figure out why. Now that I've looked it up I know that No Man's Land is what the Panhandle was called, apparently because for many years it was used only seasonally by Indians, and controlled by the Comanche. It didn't look like real hospitable land to me, but I guess most of that comfortable land had already been taken.
What I was seeing was mostly very flat grain fields and scrubland.
Still heading west, passing a sign that said turn left to Texhoma (on the OK/TX border) or turn right to Elkhart KS. Still heading toward OK's highest point, next to the mountains in both NM and CO, yet I was still seeing zero mountains. It was getting a little odd.
Finally, we got to Boise City, which has a very nice-looking RV park in town, by the way, and a sign saying Black Mesa summit is 20 miles straight ahead. And STILL no mountains.
Now the only vegetation I'm seeing are lots of cactus and low grasses. I started wondering whether stickers and cactus bother horses and cows? They sure bother my dogs, though their feet are very different.
I found the turnoff for the state park and found the road practically paved with cattle guards.
And then I realized where the mountains were: I was on them. I'm sure there's actual mountains somewhere nearby, but I got a view of the horizon that showed me I was already up quite a way.
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| that's all cactus and low grass covering the ground |
The state park is down in a bowl, and as the road started dropping down, I could see the surrounding country. Those mesas or buttes or whatever you call those landforms are probably pretty high - I just couldn't see them from the road, which must have been at the same height.
We drove gradually down to the Black Mesa State Park. The campground is fairly small and down in a bowl that's down in a bowl. It's still not the lowest point, though, which I could tell by the view.
The park office was closed, though the sign said it should be open. Maybe just one staff person who was out doing rounds or maintenance or something. I finally figured out where my space was - a back-in, not a pull-thru like I'd thought. And once I was parked (on a slope, too bad) I got my first unpleasant surprise: stickers galore. They grew up into the graveled campsite, they were thick around the water spigot and around the electrical plug-in column.
I finally spent about 15 minutes pulling sticker plants out of the ground just so my dogs could get out of the RV and walk out of our campsite without getting thoroughly stuck. Several plants full of stickers grew right where I had to park, and I was only able to avoid them because I'm a person, with shoes, and with experience of sticker plants. The dogs don't wear shoes and haven't run into stickers much until western OK so still don't recognize them by sight. I was pretty peeved about having to do that kind of housework that seems like basic maintenance for a state campground.
And as soon as we left the RV for a walk, we were deluged by flies. The kind that bite. They were all over us and were very persistent - not the kind that could be waved away, or even swatted away very easily. I spent the whole walk trying to keep them off Dext (with his thin coat) and off me. Even Gracie was bothered by them a little.
Part way through the evening, a terrific rain-, lightning- and thunder-storm came barreling through. Scared the dogs a lot. Gracie had already started agitating for a walk when the thunder started and the wind started blowing the RV around. I would have taken her out into the driving rain if I'd had to but decided to wait and see if it passed. It did.
But the flies and stickers were waiting for us when we went out.
And here's the odd thing - we seemed to be the only ones having these problems. I saw for myself that most of the other campsites didn't have stickers. And I didn't see a soul having trouble with the flies. A couple in their 30s were down the way a bit, hanging around outside, taking their dog for a walk, playing cornhole, making no moves at all to suggest flies were bothering them. I saw another pair out for a walk along the ridge above the campground, and they were moseying up the trail, stopping to talk along the way, not flapping their arms or slapping their necks or making any moves to suggest a fly problem. I saw another family farther away, and an older couple, both sets sitting outside, eating supper, enjoying the view, with apparently no fly problem. But we were swarmed.
By the time we'd taken our last walk for the day, I was already trying to figure out where else we could go. We had reservations at a state park in CO on the 1st, but I'd already paid $25/night for the next 2 nights here. I couldn't decide if giving up $50 just to get out of here was worth it. And I didn't have an internet signal down in that bowl so I couldn't look anything up to see if there were vacancies - this being a weekend, after all. But when I went to bed, I'd finally calmed down and decided maybe it wasn't as bad as I'd thought, maybe it'd be better in the morning, the dogs and I'd figure out how to make this work.
