On the road: Fall 2021 Adventure

October 2, 2021

"The Mountains are calling and I must go." --my favorite quote by John Muir

After another long hot summer in Houston, we couldn't resist the call of the open road any longer. It has been three years since we traveled in any of the western states and, while we have visited Colorado many times, we have never seen it in the fall. Knowing many campgrounds are closed for the season or have reduced services, we made reservations for some of our chosen destinations and will "wing it" for some of the journey and hope for the best. Being fully vaccinated and with recently acquired boosters, we feel that the time has come to venture out again. While our travels in the past two years have not taken the form of multi-month-long adventures as we did in 2015 and 2016, we are grabbing one month-long stints when we can.

This blog posting will be structured a bit differently than I usually do it. Instead of a chronological summary, I will share the high points in three broad categories: History, Scenic Wonders, and Geocaching.

History:

We spent two days camping and exploring Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge near Lawton, Oklahoma. (This location figures significantly in Scenic Wonders and Geocaching, too.) The Refuge has protected wildlife habitat since 1901 and was instrumental in saving the American bison from extinction when 15 animals from the Bronx Zoo were transported to the refuge in 1907.... 30 years after vanishing from the southern Plains, the bison returned.

We visit as many National Park Service sites as possible so we routed ourselves through Cheyenne in western Oklahoma to Washita Battlefield National Historic Site where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and the 7th U.S. Cavalry made a surprise attack on the Cheyenne at Chief Black Kettle's village in 1868.

While camping at Lake Scott State Park in Kansas, we saw the reconstructed ruins of El Cuartelejo, the farthest north and east a pueblo has ever been found.

We also encountered sites along the old Santa Fe Trail.

Scenic Wonders:

After 44 years of traveling and exploring, I can't believe we have never visited Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma until now. Great wildlife viewing and pink granite mountains as well as preserved prairie. We saw bison, longhorn cattle, turkeys, prairie dogs, and coyote. We heard elk bugling in the distance from three locations, but never saw them. The drive up Mount Scott found us in the clouds, but great views on the way up.

Brian scrambled down into the outcropping

Our "home away from home" on wheels

view of Lake Elmer Thomas from the drive up Mt. Scott

Almost to the top

The summit of Mt. Scott was in the clouds.

a Texas longhorn in Oklahoma

Many turkeys roamed through our campsite

Lake Quanah Parker and dam

Western Kansas can surprise and that is what happened when we visited Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park. It was opened in 2019 and doesn't even appear on our 2020 edition of Rand McNally Atlas (yes, we use an old-fashioned atlas in addition to our phones for navigation). We hiked out to the end of the trail and saw intriguing outcroppings of eroded chalk cliffs and hoodoos.

outcroppings of Niobrara Chalk deposits

At the end of the trail, we had the overlook to ourselves and sat and listened to the prairie wind...

so peaceful out there.

fossils along the trail

Seen while Geocaching:

Selected sculptures, Cameron Park Sculpture "Zoo" in Waco, TX

"Big Bobber" cache near Lake Whitney, TX

Holy City of the Wichitas

Bison sculptures are common in Oklahoma. This one is in Medicine Park near Lawton.

Geocache found inside old AC housing in Dodge City, KS

The main reason we routed ourselves through western Kansas on the way to Colorado was to find geocaches in the last 8 counties we had missed on our way through the area in 2012 when we found the oldest active cache in the world, "Mingo." Since then, more points of interest and geocaches are in the immediate area so we made a return visit.