Traveling to Texas via Oklahoma

Alabaster Caverns State Park, Freedom OK
Monday, 2 November 2020

today's route

Today's drive wasn't particularly long, as you can see, but I decided to stop here for the night instead of heading for Texas in 1 day of driving for several reasons.  For one thing, there aren't many campgrounds in the Texas Panhandle.  The most northerly state park is at Palo Duro State Park, which is south of Amarillo, and Amarillo's where the only Panhandle KOA is.  So I was limited to private campgrounds for a place to stay, and there aren't all that many of them.  And for another thing, driving straight through would be about 8 hours for me, which is more than I want to put us through if I don't have to.  And for still another, there are a lot of places I want to see in the Panhandle and I didn't want to whiz by one or more and then have to backtrack later on, or have to miss them entirely.  So I stopped in OK for the night.

I had an advantage because, as you can see from the map, I was along part of this route in August, so I knew what the campgrounds were like.  Alabaster Caverns and Boiling Springs State Parks are very close together, and I stayed in both and still remember them clearly.  I chose Alabaster Caverns because I remember picking up an internet signal here, and I couldn't at Boiling Springs.

On the road

The last town in Kansas I came to was Caldwell.  This fancy decoration downtown makes the town seem much larger than the 1,000 it has.

In the vicinity of this arch I saw a historical marker that I didn't stop for but did look up.  It was for the Last Chance Saloon and, as often happens with bits of history from just post-Civil War, it's interesting.  You can find it at this link.   https://www.hmdb.org/Last-Chance-Saloon

In Oklahoma I came to Medford, a town of fewer than 1,000, which seems to have some residents from Poland or Czechoslovakia or wherever they use this kind of letter, and name: Smrčk.  As I was coming into town I passed Smrčk's Cafe.  In town I found this memorial.

memorial of the Oklahoma Land Run

detail

more detail

The dogs and I took a short walk and passed a house that still had decorated pumpkins in front.  One of them had letters carved in it: C I N K.  I puzzled about that for a while and decided maybe it was the name of the family living there.  Then when I was leaving town I noticed a business called Cink Services Inc.  So yeah, it was a name.

I also passed a house with a big sign out front that said, "Welcome Home Radar."

I passed through the tiny town of Jet, which isn't on the AAA map, but I remember it from when I turned there to go to the Great Salt Plains State Park.

When I was here before, I didn't go past Jet so the next part of the drive was new to me.  I saw a sign saying I could turn left to go to Yewed.  I pondered that for a bit and managed to turn it into the word Dewey.  And just then I passed Dewey Road on the right.  There's got to be a story about that.

In the town of Cherokee, I saw a sign at the Methodist church saying they're holding worship services at the fairgrounds, which sounds like a good plan for protecting against the virus.

I passed the Short Springs Cemetery Association building and wondered if I'd missed the town of Short Springs somewhere.  But there's no town, just the cemetery.  The odd thing about that building is - well - first, that there's a building at all and also that it's a tiny building.  I'll bet they can't have a meeting of 10 people in there.  And besides all that is that it's not even at the cemetery but down the road a bit from there.  

Today, like yesterday, I was fighting a strong crosswind.  With these narrow roads I'm driving, it can be a little scary sometimes.

At the town of Alva, I stopped on the outskirts for gas at a Phillips 66 station, where I paid $1.75/gallon, which is the lowest I've paid in quite a while.  Oddly, about a half mile farther into town, several gas stations were charging $1.99 and $1.96.  That's a big jump and I can't see that a half a mile should make such a difference.

In Alva I passed a church with a sign that said: "If your life stinks, we have a pew for you."

I parked by a church to walk the dogs and noticed in several places a small sign that said "POW Trail."  So of course I looked it up and found an odd story from the local public library about the POW camp for Nazis that was built here.   https://www.alvaok.org/Public-Library-Camp  There are so many odd stories sitting around the towns of this country.

I passed a farm that advertised a Hay Maze, that I think they built using the round hay bales as the walls of the maze.  That same farm had Alpacas grazing in a field.

I passed a sign that said, "Eat Wheat."  I remember that sign from when I was here before, and to me it sounds like we're being urged to eat raw grain, like chewing on grass.

I ran out of reception for any NPR station a little while back and was left with my own thoughts - always a hodgepodge - and came up with a New Yorker cartoon that I think may have been by Booth.  It showed a middle-aged couple in a dismal, 1-room apartment with a bare bulb hanging down from a wire as the light fixture for the room.  The wife was disheveled and ironing clothes, and the man was coming in the door from work carrying his lunch pail.  He said to her, "I heard a bit of good news today - we shall pass this way but once."

That's just about the way I'm feeling about the upcoming election.

When I got to tonight's campground, I was surprised to see there were already 2 RVs and a tent pitched.  There are only 9 campsites here plus a small tenting area, and when I was here before I was the only one for both nights I stayed here.  Of course, this being November I didn't think there'd be anybody this time either, which shows how wrong I can be when I try.  But I go to bed so early that I didn't notice anybody else.

What I hadn't forgotten was that there are a lot of stickers in the grass here, and that hasn't changed.  I took the dogs for a walk and Gracie got 6 stickers in 1 foot, 2 more in each of 2 other feet, and 1 more in the 4th foot.  Painful for her, and painful for me when I took them out.