2015 Road Trip: Part 8 (OK-NM)

Oklahoma to New Mexico
Day 12
4.25.15

To make up for my damp morning the day before, I awoke to perfectly clear skies at Black Kettle Campground.  This was my view toward Dead Indian Lake:

I took a brief walk along the shoreline to fully experience the redness of the soil that is everywhere around here.  It is so strange when I am used to good old Maine soil that is brown and black and filled with clay.  This stuff is bright red, and very crumbly.

Shoreline rocks of Dead Indian Lake

Beavertail Cactus.  The dangers of the west are
starting to make themselves known.

While toasting some tasty blueberry bagels, I checked the weather forecast and things appeared to be relatively clear for most of the day.  I am one of those people that could listen to the NOAA forecast for way too long if I don't pay attention.  It's super handy to have a weather receiver for those times when I'm camping and internet forecasts aren't an option.   It also makes everything seem way more hardcore.

On my way from the campground back to I-40, which I arbitrarily chose as my route west, I was hopping along the road when I saw a huge collection of wind turbines off in the distance to the west.  I thought, well heck, I'm on a solo road trip, why not check them out.  So I ended up in a network perfectly straight roads that make up "blocks" that are 1 square mile.  All over I was seeing cows in these mile square pastures, and the wind turbines were getting closer.  With the predictable pattern of roads, I just drove in a direction that got me closer, and turned where necessary.

An example of the roads that make up the western Okla countryside

As I kept driving, more turbines would appear along the horizon, probably amounting to hundreds of them.

A cluster of turbines.

As I made it to I-40 again, I kept seeing turbines all along the highway for miles and miles, and my guess is that in total I saw over a thousand of them.  Never have I seen so many of them.  I assume that these turbines are powering the cattle ranches that cover this part of the countryside.

Now, I thought that Oklahoma was going to be flat, but what I really should have prepared for was Texas.  In Texas, the highways are set at 75mph, but so are the single lane state roads.  Everything is so expansive (at least in the TX panhandle where I was) that these high speeds make sense.  Initially I was dreading this part of the trip, since I love the twisty roads.  But there is something so vast about the emptiness and the hemispherical view you get that makes you feel so unrestricted.  If this picture doesn't capture it, I'm not sure what will.

Rt. 70 southbound near Clarendon, TX.

I had gone off the highway to find a pretty place to break for lunch.  The benefit to doing this is that I get to see some parts of the state that are away from the highway, and it breaks up the kind of driving that I'm doing.  If it was all highway, I would be bored quickly.  Even if it was all twisty mountain roads, I could get sick of that too, so it's important to keep it fresh.  My lunch spot was at Caprock Canyons State Park.  As I got closer, I was able to see the flatness give way to canyon rims.  Out of nowhere, this curvy section appeared as I wound through the canyons.

I had to pull over at this turnoff just to take it all in.  Canyons are something that rarely exist in the northeast.  Maybe we have a gorge or two, but something of this scale is unheard of in my home state.

Wombat lookin' happy as ever by the canyons

I was having fun too!

I found a nice picnic area that had tables with roofs over the top, I assume to keep the burning sun off pale scandinavian people who burn at the thought of sunlight.  After lunch, I made my way west along the state roads, through towns like Silverton and Tulia.  Some of these places were utterly depressing.  There would be a square mile or so of town block, but nearly every shop looked like no one was there for about 50 years.  Maybe a movie theater, or an old gas station, but not much was going on.  By the time I made it to Tulia, I saw a tractor shop with a Horsch overloader for grain harvesting, and being a Farming Sim fan, I had to stop and look at the real thing before my eyes.

Grain harvesters offload into these, and then when this is full,
it will offload into a semi-trailer which then goes off to the farm.

Tulia, TX was a bit more bustling, and had a highway connection via I-27, which took me up to Amarillo.  Along the way, I saw a sign for the town of Happy.  I'll tell you right now, the midwest has the funniest town names.  On the radio, I heard some stuff that was going on in Turkey, TX.  I mean, how far can this go?

Onward and westward, I entered the state of New Mexico, the land of enchantment.  After driving around in this state, I learned that that slogan is as accurate as you can get.  This was also my entry into Mount Daylight Time!

Soon after entering the state, I had to switch to state roads on my way to the next campsite in the Kiowa National Grassland.  I was headed to Mills Canyon, which I had read has a campground at the top, and if you have a capable enough vehicle, you can drive two miles into the canyon and camp there.  I bet you can guess which one I chose.

NM is also really flat.  It seems even more flat because there are no trees.
(The yellow stripe is from my solar charger sitting on the dash)

All the roads here are lined by cattle fencing, and you see sometimes a large crowd of cows, other times maybe only two or three, but there are cows everywhere.  They literally own all the land.  Even with a GPS, I've learned that planning out gas stops is very important in this part of the country.  "Nearest gas, 50 miles" is not uncommon.  And town is defined as such here in NM: two roads that cross, maybe a barn, and a truck if you're lucky.  It's funny to see these places listed on my atlas, and then you drive through, wondering where the "town" was.  I suppose that everything is so spread out in this area that they wanted to put at least a few towns in for aesthetic appeal on the map.

Canyon rims start to appear.

Near the place where I took the above picture, the road climbed up this to near 6000 feet.  It was pretty, though I wish I had been driving down so I could see it better.  I didn't stop for pictures because I wanted to make sure I had daylight to make it down to the campground, if the road was going to be notoriously bad.

I found the 9-mile gravel road to the upper campground.  There, I found a few people chilling by their RVs, and actually a horse trailer.  I encountered the horses on my way down to the lower campground, on their way back up after a ride down to the bottom of the canyon.  The road wasn't too horrible, though I went slow to avoid tire punctures with sharp rocks.  It was very pretty look down into the canyon along the way, and seeing the Canadian River winding through.

Off-roading Wombat once again!

Likely due to the difficulty of the road to the base, there were many open campsites.  I think there was only one other group of people there.  So I logically chose a spot that was close to the river and close to a bathroom.  There was a large cloud of dust behind me everywhere I drove, though the campsite roads were more gravely.  Once I parked, I saw on the back of my car a coating of fine red dust all over the back of the car.

Home for tonight!  A fire pit too!

Looking the opposite way, I had a sweet view of the canyon wall to the east.  Had it not been so late, I would have checked it out that night.  (I actually did the next morning, so I was able to get a close look at the rock structure.)

The elevation of the bottom of the canyon is near that of Mt. Katahdin in Maine, around 5300', and the walls rose to about 5800'.  It is so strange to imagine that a perfectly level line from this camp to Mt. Katahdin would match an elevation that rises 4000 feet from the surroundings of northern Maine.  This is all part of the slow and steady climb to the Rocky Mountains.  The midwest is flat, but it is ever increasing in elevation as you go west.  Check out this cool image I found that illustrates this very well.  It has the state boundaries so you can estimate roughly where I am.  Mills Canyon is about at the top of the red range in northeast NM.  You can see how through Oklahoma and Texas, there is a steady climb.

With a picnic table at my disposal, I decided to a) eat lots of food in a non-rushed environment, and b) break out my stash of Twizzlers.  They were delicious.  The sky was clearing from the slightly overcast it was before, and as darkness fell, the stars covered the sky.  Also, the waxing crescent moon came up above the canyon walls before long.  I made my best attempt at a campfire in the pit I was provided, but I had a fairly crucial problem, which is wood.  There were cedar trees around, but you're not supposed to cut those up...only dead wood, and all I could find that was dead was these bushes that almost looked like tumbleweed.  They were very dry, because I guess it hardly rains here, and they were small, so everything burned very quickly.  Because of this, the fire did not last terribly long, but it was fun to have it for awhile.

Having been camping for a few days already, I was beginning to have some loneliness symptoms, so I figured what better way to cure this than to pull out the accordion and play all the familiar tunes!  This was an experience in itself.  Playing under the night sky in a canyon with a rising moon is something I haven't ever done before, and it was very therapeutic.  In addition, it was nice to write down all the happenings of the day in the journal I've brought along.  I've done some digital journaling, but when Im camping, sitting down to write it all out by hand is much better.

This day was a bit shorter as far as mileage, but this was the idea, since I was entering the land of more interesting terrain.  I wanted to take more time to enjoy it without rushing.  Day 12 miles: 463.  Total miles to date: 3402.

Prepare yourselves for an interesting day coming up.  Make sure your tray tables and seat backs are in the upright position.  Seat belts would be useful too, since we're going up through the mountains tomorrow. Yeehaw!

2015 Road Trip: Part 7 (AR-OK)

Arkansas to Oklahoma

Day 11

4.24.15

Deep in the unknown of the south central region of the US, I awoke to the pitter patter of raindrops on my tent.  I slept in to try and catch up after my extended drive yesterday, but I was very interested to see the campsite in daylight.  It was wet, green, filled with bugs, and there was a very large spider on my tent (thankfully on the outside).

Wombat settled and ready for another day of travel (as always!)

I attempted to pack up the tent without getting it more wet than it already was.  That was mostly a failure, so in it went to the stuff sack as a sopping mess of nylon and netting.  I realized I hadn't taken any pictures of my packing system for the car, so as an excuse to stand under the hatch to stay dry, I took a picture of it.

Clockwise from bottom left: water jug, accordion, clothes, sleeping bag,
sleeping supplies, frisbee, food coolers, cooking supplies, and boots!

The car appears to be pretty full, but what's nice is that it's only one layer deep in most places, so I can access just about anything I need quickly. I admit it took me awhile to remember the location of everything, but by now, I've got it down like the back of my hand.

I found a covered area elsewhere in the campground where I could prepare some breakfast without getting drenched, so that was step one. Afterwards, I drove into town to search for a place to stay for the coming night.  The goal was Black Kettle National Grassland in western Oklahoma, 475 miles away.

Since I was in western Arkansas already, I entered Oklahoma pretty soon in the drive, though keep in mind I started in the afternoon since I didn't want to be driving on only 4 hours of sleep.  It was very rainy, and according to my portable weather receiver, I heard that there was even more severe T-storms and tornado watches in Louisiana.  Despite my wish to see a tornado while driving through the midwest, I was easily repelled by the thought of large hail wrecking my car.

Oklahoma greeted me with a sweet trailer full of tractors!  Impressive load, pulling 4 full size tractors, each with easily 100-150 horsepower. Happy to see a Kubota included.

The rain gave way to some partly cloudy skies once I arrived on I-40 westbound.  It was a relatively uneventful stretch of road, giving me some time to enjoy some music, and by music I mean Infected Mushroom.  They are the best band for making long stretches of highway go by like nothing.

One big surprise for me, was how NOT flat eastern Oklahoma was.  It was actually filled with rolling hills.  Every once in awhile I would get a long bit of straight road, but nothing crazy like what I would see in the coming days.

While passing though Okla City, I saw some radical older planes right near the highway, and I almost stopped to take pictures, but...as you noticed, there are none.  Instead, I pulled off the highway to find some place to cook dinner.  Like the day before, I was in favor of cooking dinner, then continuing driving for awhile to the campsite.  This allows one to more quickly pass through theoretically boring parts of the country.  I was very wrong about this assumption.

I found an unexpectedly neat place called Red Rock Canyon Sate Park for dinner, just outside Hinton, OK.  I was racing the sunset, hoping to arrive at the park before the sun dipped below the horizon.  I won, and got this picture as the prize.

Red Rock Canyon SP sunset

One of the great things about a trip like this is that you get to see the sun rise and set from so many different places.

I drove down into the canyon, and was surprised to see big chunks of red rock jutting out from the ground like this!

One of several large jutting rocks in the park

A shot of Wombat near the canyon wall

Panorama of the canyon wall

After selfishly taking some Wombat shots, I found a picnic table next to some other campers and pretended like I had reserved a spot.  It would have been great except for a guy with his big truck and a trail with an obnoxious generator running on it.  God knows what they were using it for, but thank you for ruining the camping experience for everyone around you.  Finally he pulled it away and shut off the generator, and only then was the smell of campfires able to permeate everything.  It's a smell I have missed.  Soon, I will be having some campfires.

After dinner, I began the last leg of the journey to the Black Kettle Nat'l. Grassland, 100 miles to the west.  This is almost one part of the trip I wish I had seen in the daylight, and for two reasons.  One, I would like to have compared the western part of the state to the eastern.  Two, I nearly went mad with how straight the back roads are in Oklahoma. Compared to these roads, I-40 was a twisting mountain road.  You turn onto the road, then you don't move the steering wheel for 20 miles.  But there are some rolling hills, and at night, this makes it seem like the road will end every time you crest a hill.  Thankfully they warn drivers of curves with many reflecty signs.  And if there is a stop sign somewhere, they are kind to drivers who zone out after many straight miles by putting rumble strips before the intersection to wake you up.

Eventually, I found this campground, though I felt very clueless wandering around the mishmash of roads at night.  I saw this one car parked (engine running) down at the boat ramp, with no people to speak of.  Keep in mind this is at 11pm.  Slightly confused.  I wandered for a bit with my headlamp to find a place to set up camp.  I found a place that wasn't too far from the parking lot, which is ideal when car camping. Who wants to carry stuff a long way?

Day 11 progress map.  Miles from the day: 475.  Total miles accumulated: 2939.  Nearly 3000, and there are still at least four large states before one can see the Pacific Ocean.  The United States is an expansive place.

Check out the next post for daylight pictures of Black Kettle grasslands!