From Oklahoma to New Mexico

Another milestone we may or may not be celebrating on this blog is Nessa's One Year California Anniversary!!! Last year at almost this exact date, Nessa and I made landfall in Cupertino, California, where she officially traded east coast for west coast.  

So, today I'm posting a retrospective of our whirlwind cross-country road trip to California - my third time moving a friend coast to coast via auto. You may remember the Photo-an-Hour we shared of the all day and through the night journey from Vermont to Tulsa, Oklahoma; some may write it off as delirious ramblings and blurry streaks of light, but other, like-minded midnight ramblers can probably relate all too well.

And after pressing the limits of an all day driving adventure, we finally crossed the Tulsa finish line as the expected overwhelming exhaustion hit us, nearly 26 hours later. Even though we were over the moon to have successfully surprised our friend, Molly, who only knew to anticipate us from the last minute text we sent her from Ohio, we had to immediately crash until further notice. Molly surreptitiously went about her Saturday afternoon while we napped in her bed until we were able to make the groggy leap from blanket-nest to BBQ dinner with friends, a small yet acceptable amount less delirious than before.

 

But we powered through, buoyed by the bonus that consumables in Tulsa are refreshingly cheap, delicious, and seemingly catered specifically to the local twenty- and early thirty-somethings that dominated the downtown atmosphere; it looked like a freaking social networking convention was in town. This is most likely because Tulsa is experiencing a comeback among new businesses in the area famously vacated during the mass exodus of oil industries in 1982, coupled with the harsh detail that nary a school, church, or even grocery store graced the business grid. Inconvenience, ahoy! All these young folk were fresh on the scene in the vigorously renovated and youthful downtown island, including our friend Molly who had moved there for a business opportunity earlier that year.

We spent the night touring the little bars and nightclubs and enjoying the local ephemera: shuffleboard, dirt cheap drinks, BBQ on every corner, billiards, running into acquaintances everywhere, and somewhat less enjoyable - the CRICKET. Ah, the dread cricket: swarming shade on city sidewalks and fields near you, should you happen to be in northeastern Oklahoma. I'll try to forget becoming hopelessly aware that I might be having a "D.A.R.E." moment, slashing at my skin thinking there were bugs crawling all over me until I finally found the offending (and very real) cricket trapped between my tank top and naked back, giving me an official Case of the Willies. 

Tulsa was a refreshing, but short stop on our tour West, because after an epic morning sleep-in + brunch, we were on our way to Somewhere, New Mexico.

Somewhere? Hopefully. We had the panhandle of Texas to cross, straight through Amarillo on the loathsome interstate until, well, we grew tired and had to stop to make camp. We dipped out of Oklahoma on tidy ranch town back roads, watching the sunset and playing Dry or Wet County Roulette on the hunt for tasty local beers and whiskey to whet our future esurient thirsts - wherever those thirsts may be.

So, beneath microbursts we sailed the geometric ribbon of asphalt, dodging smears of lightning clouds with their dumpy wetness obscuring the road polka dotted with the angry, yawning maws of tractor trailers. After several hours of this, we unfortunately reached that part of late night driving with no aim where we arrived at a destination with no discerning services for bedding down. 

Employing various cutting edge atlas-based technologies, we surrendered to the fact that we had much further to go until we were more likely to find a fitting sleeping scenario that  provided safety in concord with our independent natures and was still somewhat on course. 

And that's how we ended up setting up camp at 3:30 AM in Ute Lake State Park, just nigh of Tucumcari in the eastern plains of New Mexico, trying to convince ourselves that we were keeping sustainable road trip hours. 

But the lake showed great strength in its ability to remain harmonious with our desires and we were eventually on our way to coffee the next morning, blissfully unmolested. In Santa Fe, we sampled gourmet olive oil and vinegar and ate at the famously delicious street vendor, Roque's Carnitas, which came and went highly recommended. 10/10 would flirt with Roque for free Jamaica iced tea again.

There is something about New Mexico that pulls me in like a labyrinth, right to the centaur and never letting go. 

From the living rockscape of sunflowers and cholla to the sharp canyons in dry, dusty green, I'm a goner. This nearly proved true as we trekked into the extremely rugged and not for the faint of heart Jemez Mountains. We had ourselves a bitty adventure in the woods there on a goose chase for hot springs nestled in the secret nooks of steep ravines where we we wound up swapping relaxing soaks for some accidentally stumbling upon vintage meth labs and maybe almost dying. 

And that is to be continued...

Ready, Set, Tulsa! > Photo-an-Hour

Nessa and I chronicled our epic 25-hour non-stop road trip from Vermont to our first destination in Tulsa, Oklahoma by taking a photo every hour... some are pathetic attempts to snap a shot from inside a moving vehicle, others are actually kind of cool. Please kindly mind the delirium. Onward!

1pm EST, Vermont > A rainy start to the trip.

2pm EST, New York > Glamorous, blurry, overcast fields.

3pm EST, New York > 151 miles down, 1,300 miles to go!

4pm EST, New York > More rain.

5pm EST, New York > Kale chips!!!

6pm EST, New York > To read or to stare out the window?

7pm EST, New York > Then the sun begins to set on us.

8pm EST, Pennsylvania > And the pretty lights come out to play.

9pm EST, Ohio > Time for coffee.

10pm EST, Ohio > Things will start to get weird.

10pm EST, Ohio > Construction zone in the distance or the depths of hell?

11pm EST, Ohio > Refuel.

12am EST, Ohio > The lights all began to melt.

1am EST, Indiana > Lost in highway hypnosis.

2am EST, Indiana > A very hasty packing job.

3am EST, Indiana > Still got my hands on the wheel.

4am EST, Indiana > Let go of the focus and blur out all the line.

4am CST, Illinois > 4am... again.

5am CST, Illinois > Stay focused, Zy.

6am CST, Missouri > Finally! A sign that points to Tulsa!

7am CST, Missouri > The long awaited glimpse of sun.

8am CST, Missouri > The sunrise chased us for a loooong time.

9am CST, Missouri > You know we stopped at Waffle House.

10am CST, Missouri > Ozark descent.

11am CST, Missouri > I'm about all out of captions... and energy.

12pm CST, Oklahoma! > So close I can taste it.

1pm CST, Oklahoma > Blue Dome District, Tulsa!

Go: Okla-home

(Hi All- I am back with another exciting installment of 'Go' (Follow the link to the last chapter)... where do AGP and I find ourselves now? Oklahoma!)

As our friends headed east towards home, we headed just a little bit north in order to go straight west- all the way across Oklahoma, into the panhandle, and then right out the other side!

Oklahoma is a state that I have long wanted to explore, kind of like the way I felt about Arkansas. I knew I would love it- long, grid-like roads cutting through miles of wheat and faded nothingness- have you ever seen Twister? Absolutely one of my top five movies. Plus, before the trip, I tore through Prairie Women: Women of the Kansas Frontier (Joanna Stratton) and The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Timothy Egan). I recommend both of those very highly if you are interested at all in frontier life or the dust bowl. I was definitely prepped as we headed onto the prairie.

We cleaned up from our festival debaucheries at Kettle Campground in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, another town famous for its groundwater. Our trip had finally begun!! We still had a lot of technical things to work out regarding the packing method of our car and general campsite set up, so we spent the evening unpacking, cleaning, and finding a home for everything. The next morning we took a small side trip through the unique village of Eureka Springs, which has distinct curving streets with stores that have street level entrances on more than one floors. Then we hunted around for magically healing groundwater springs, took a quick trip up the fire tower to catch a glimpse of Christ of the Ozarks and a stop at the Thorncrown Chapel, an architectural jewel designed by E. Fay Jones.

And then Oklahoma at last! We hit the highway out of Fayetteville, AR towards Tulsa, OK and then jumped up into the Osage Nation to Pawhuska (home of the Pioneer Woman!). The small towns that we passed through really captured the essence of life on the remote plains. As a girl who grew up in the prolific suburbs between Boston and New York, it was strange to find myself in a supermarket devoid of fresh meat and with the produce selection of a corner bodega in the city (I would later learn in South Dakota that I was in what is called a “Food Desert”: despite miles of farmland, none of it was being dedicated for human consumption and with little to no access to grocery stores). In all of my travels across the United States and northern Canada had I yet to come across such isolated towns whose historic significance had all but faded away. (And please don’t think that I am trying to discount the personal significance that of course still bolsters each unique community!) Naturally, I was enraptured. I could have spent the whole summer crisscrossing Oklahoma, living off of kielbasa and frozen vegetables if I had to.

Our first stop was the Great Salt Plains Lake State Park, north-central Oklahoma, famous for two things: red sandstone cliffs and… well, the second thing I am going to keep that a secret for now! (Geology buffs should start getting excited!) Our campsite at the state park was not entirely secluded (abutted the only neighborhood in town), but was right on the lake edge and never mind that we didn’t see or hear from anybody the whole night. It was pretty sweet. Even better, the night was alive with cicadas! And I don’t just mean singing from the trees, but alit in a way that might be considered a swarm by those sensitive to insect proximity. Cicadas are clumsy and harmless, and extremely fun to chase around with sticks. Just a little tap and out of the air they fall. (Absolutely no harm was caused to any of the cicadas who were involved in my game… they seemed notorious for flying straight into things (read: faces, trees, parked cars) and falling on the ground anyway).

(Brussels sprouts for breakfast? Yes, please!)

We also consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have been witnesses to a remarkable celestial event that happened to occur the exact moment we were star-gazing over the lake. On that night, June 5th, at around 10pm, we were treated to a bolide meteor fireball! It was a like a green shooting star, bigger than anything I have ever seen in the sky!! Truly an extraordinary event. Since we obviously didn’t get a photo of the fireball, enjoy some pictures of us playing with our headlamps and imagine they are meteors streaking through the sky:

In the morning, before we left for the panhandle, we made a quick stop on the opposite side of the lake to do a little gem-hounding and satisfy the trained geologist inside of me. Yay! What I was keeping a secret was that the Great Salt Plains Lake is a mine for hourglass selenite crystals, which are unique to only this locale and completely free and easy to gather. Selenite is a form of crystallized gypsum, which when combined with the clay sediment from the Great Salt Plains Lake, form a unique hourglass shape inside. I gathered quite a few that chilly, wind-swept morning, and had such a good time (between that and the cicada chasing) that I would absolutely make a point to return to the Great Salt Plains Lake on a future trip. The following are a few pictures of me having a blast digging in the salty mud for crystals:

Our goal for the day was to make all the way to the western point of the panhandle. We cruised aimlessly around a bit to try to catch a glimmer of Gloss Mountain, which is also known for its high selenite content that makes the mountains shimmer like glass, and then we took a quick visit to the Sod House Museum in Aline.

(It was overcast while we passed Gloss Mountain so we didn't get to see very much glimmer!)

Then we entered the heart of the dust bowl! Amazingly, we could even still see the old drifts of dust built up around surviving fences from that time. Most impressive were the power lines that stretched the entire 200-mile span, bringing power into the lives of the people in towns like Guymon and Boise (pronounced like boy) City. And Boise, was it flat (I’m so funny!). Technically, the panhandle of Oklahoma is flatter than a pancake! We had a good time on the flat, quiet roads, just us and the waving wheat.

We made it all the way to the state park that contains Black Mesa, which at 4,973ft is the highest point in Oklahoma, and lies at the westernmost edge of Oklahoma and dust bowl territory. Today, it is a state park that marks where the Rocky Mountains meet the short-grass prairie. We took a day hike up to the peak through the land of black lava rock and spotted with juniper and cholla cacti.

(Oh yea, then we got to see some fossilized dinosaur footprints!! Though it might be hard to imagine, those aren't muddy puddles, but exposed mudstone with perma-dino tracks!)

Ah, Oklahoma. I was greatly impressed with my trip there. Despite its reputation and lack of obvious attractions for those from the crowded east coast, each day was long, eventful, and informative. Oklahoma plays an immense role in our country's history and I am grateful for those who endured the hardships then and now. Even now as I recollect, I long to be back to the flat, golden lands, sneaking with cacti and a-buzz with desert life. Maybe I could have been an effective pioneer, had I been given the cosmic chance!

Here is this chapters route-- so much happened in two days!:

 

A: Eureka Springs, Arkansas

B: Great Salt Plains Lake, Alfalfa, Oklahoma

C: Black Mesa State Park, Kenton, Oklahoma

[Follow this blog for more adventures!]

After the break, follow along as AGP and I head into Colorado in
Go: Colo-rockin’

Oklahoma on Dwellable