Alabaster Caverns State Park, Freedom
Tuesday, 25 August 2020
The section of Little Sahara State Park campground that I stayed in had 4 rows that looked just like this. Except I was the only person who stayed here overnight.
From what I saw when the dogs and I walked around some of the other sections this morning, there were only a few other campers spread out in this very large campground.
I was surprised to get a good internet signal but noticed this morning that the local internet company had a large station just across the road from where I was, to cater to the multitudes that are usually in the campground, I suppose.
You can just see at the back of the photo above that there are sand dunes there. This photo at the right is what's there. I'd thought it was an entrance to the dunes for the folks with ORVs but then I found a fairly efficient fence installed with signs to keep out. I think people had been destabilizing the dunes right here and the park folks were trying to protect them.
This sand reminded me of the sand at Padre Island - it seemed about the same color and texture.
Gracie loved rolling around in the sand here. She'd end up with her nose and eyes full of it and I'd have to clear them out. It reminded me of a story I'd heard about little kids growing up in the Dust Bowl having as one of their chores to clean out the nostrils of the farm animals several times a day from all the blowing dust.
I saw these little flowers growing at the dunes - they're the green you can see in the photo above. Maybe it was the angle of the sun, but they seemed almost translucent to me and quite pretty.
I spotted tracks that I'd thought belonged to a raccoon and a rabbit. Later I learned that, while there are rabbits in the park, what I'd seen were probably deer tracks. But I think I was right about the raccoon.
The photo at left is really for my memory. The aerial view I'd gotten from Google made it look like the campground was covered in sand, and I was a little worried we'd get stuck in it.
Instead what I found was practically caliche. And now that I've looked that up online, I think it might have actually been caliche, which Wikipedia tells me occurs in the Kalahari Desert, the Mojave Desert, and the High Plains of the western US. Well, this is the High Plains, so maybe that's what it is.
Anyway, not a chance of getting stuck in it. Instead, it was hard for the dogs to walk on, especially Gracie who seems to have tender feet. Plus there were plenty of stickers lining the roadway, making it hard for the dogs to find any place to do bathroom business. Not really a hospitable place, though certainly quiet.
I could see from driving through the campground that it was set up for people to enjoy off-road driving - extra space for them to park their tow vehicles, for instance, and directions to the entrance to the sand dunes.
They'd been surprised when I checked in yesterday at the park office that I wasn't here to do ORVing - I'd just come to see the sand dunes - and they told me where to rent equipment if I changed my mind. They also told me about an observation platform I could visit, and that was my first stop today.
Because I was already at Little Sahara, I decided to do a little exploring before I left. I was still finding it hard to believe there was a bunch of sand plunked down in the middle of ordinary Oklahoma farmland.
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| today's route |
I found these signs at the base of the pathway to the observation platform, and I'll put them here even though I didn't find them particularly informative.
As you can see, most of this information is slanted towards the ORV crowd. So here's what I learned from other sources:
The Panhandles of OK and TX were once covered with a vast, shallow sea. About 250 million years ago, the sea began filling with red shale and white gypsum. The gypsum crystals formed in the compacted layers of rock, then got buried under more sediment.
Over a long period of time, this area was raised along with the Rocky Mountains (and probably drained whatever was left of that sea). Millions of years of erosion from prairie winds and summer rainstorms exposed the red sediments and shiny gypsum crystals.
Little Sahara was created 11,000 years ago and is made of vast deposits of quartz from when a prehistoric version of the Cimarron River covered the entire area. I crossed today's Cimarron River when I came into the campground yesterday and can state it's a lot smaller now. Note that Little Sahara isn't all that far from Quartz Mountain, as the crow flies, so I guess that quartz is related to this quartz.
These sand dunes created by erosion are constantly moved by wind, weather and ORVs. They're called "walking hills" and move about a foot a year to the northeast.
And that's how a big batch of sand dunes came to appear in the middle of mountains and red dirt.
Little Sahara Observation Center
They call it a "center" though I don't know why. Instead it's a paved pathway that climbs at quite a steep angle in places with a few benches and interpretive signs along the way (mostly the how-to-stay-safe-on-an-ORV type), ending in an observation platform where, frankly, I couldn't observe much of the sand dunes at all.
This photo above is about the best view I had from there. I took the 2 videos below, both of which are very short, because I was trying to show the extent of the dunes and the mountains in the background. Neither of those things seems to have been very clear.
What's extremely clear is how hard the wind was blowing. That's the sound you hear that drowns out the cicadas (which were as loud as a brass band to me) and the distant sounds of the one ORV that was on the dunes when we were there. Interesting how our ears tune out some sounds, because I never heard the wind and that's the dominant feature of these videos. Anyway, I tried.
On the platform itself there were several signs about the history of nearby Waynoka, whose brush with fame seems to have been visits by Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. There were also signs about the park's wildlife and about the history of the local Indians.
I'd mentioned at the park office that I noticed miles of grasses and assumed it was either hay or for cattle grazing, but I hadn't seen many cows. They told me there're a lot more cows here than I think, but also that the fields could have been growing hay or alfalfa or wheat.
But that explains why I've seen fields with rows of cut grain just lying on the ground: based on that information I picked up about hay bales, the grain has to dry out before it's rolled up, to keep it from mildewing before it's used.
I passed through Waynoka on my way north and got the impression it exists entirely for the local farmers and the ORV tourism. Their only grocery store is basically an expanded version of a convenience store, so folks must make a weekly shopping trip to somewhere else.
I'd taken a look at the map and decided to go through Alva on my way to tonight's campground. It's the largest town in the area and only a little out of the shortest route. Plus I thought it more likely to have a decent grocery store than any other town and, since Waynoka sure didn't, I was glad I'd made the plan.
Alva
Coming into town I saw a sign advertising Alva State Bank & Trust Co.: "Older than Oklahoma." Sure enough, it was founded in 1901 and OK didn't become a state until 1907.
The town of Alva (pop. about 5,000) was established in 1893, their sign says. It seems to have made a concerted effort to become a city of murals. I saw several more than these I took photos of.
This next one isn't exactly a mural, but it covered a lot of the side of the high school gym and, besides, is an interesting story.
Back on the road
As I was leaving town I passed the Cherokee Strip Museum and noticed its sign: "Hours Monday-Friday 10-5; Saturday varies; Sunday closed." I've noticed that the hours on a lot of these smaller museums vary, but they're not usually as honest about it. The Cherokee Strip, by the way, is the section of land that runs between the Panhandle in the west and the Osage Nation in the east up here in northern OK. The Cherokee had been forced to move here on the Trail of Tears, and after the Civil War had been forced to relinquish title to their land, which in 1893 became the site of the largest land run in the US. If I'd had more time to spend, I'd have been interested to see what the museum had to say about it.
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| Texas Longhorn |
I passed a field with a small herd of cows that had horns in a shape I haven't seen before. I've looked cow horns up online and my best guess is that they're some type of Texas Longhorn. I got this photo off the internet, but it shows the best approximation I could find to what I saw. See how her horns go out, then curve up, and then curve back? The horns on the cows I saw were like that only a little more compact. Since I thought all Longhorns had those really long drawn-out horns, I was surprised to find this photo of some that are shorter.
Today I've been passing farmland that's pretty flat with hills in the distance, lots of cows, and lots of Trump flags. That seems to be the ambiance around here.
I've also been seeing quite a few Kansas license plates in this part of the state, but then it's only a few miles from here.
I came to the town of Freedom, pop. 289, and saw a sign saying it has been designated "An Oklahoma Certified City." I tried fairly diligently to find what a certified city is but came up only with something about a nationwide program to help cities encourage business growth. Freedom, needless to say, is the smallest "city" in OK to get this designation.
And on to Alabaster Caverns State Park.
