A Blog About Land Rovers and Living in Oklahoma
I know this is a Land Rover site, and if you only tune in read about my exploits in my Land Rover, I understand if you don’t go any further…but I went out in my F150.
Continue reading “Southwest Oklahoma Expedition – January 2021 Part 1 (Post #590) 2/1/2021”
We woke in Picture Canyon. Erik and his team planned to return to Oklahoma City. We made a big breakfast cooking everything we hadn’t eaten so far on the trip. By the time we finished cooking eating and packing up Mr. Fisher and I had to change our plans too.
The trek up Black Mesa and back takes at least 5 hours. We had 7 hours of driving to get home. We had an hour and a half to get to the trail-head. The math put us in Norman around 11 PM or even later. That wasn’t really an option as I had to go back to work on Tuesday. So we skipped Black Mesa. I’ve been to the Black Mesa area three times and I haven’t made the hike yet. My next trip to the region Black Mesa will be my primary goal. I’m doing that first.
We headed to Campo, Colorado to get some fuel. We found a garage there with a mechanic, that’s something to put in the memory bank just in case. We fueled up and struck up a conversation with a local gentleman who heard we were overlanding and gave us a great suggestion for a route home. We headed south out of Campo looking for Road C. We headed east and soon found ourselves out on the wide open grassland.
Along the way we found a historical marker and stopped to check it out. Turned out it was a short cut for the Santa Fe Trail.
You can find it by clicking this map.google.com link.
GPS coordinates
“Santa Fe Trail Marker with Stone Posts”
37°01’05.7″N 102°27’42.3″W
37.018258, -102.461744
The markers were for the Aubry Cutoff. From the sign, it was a way from the Mountain Route to the Cimarron Route on the Santa Fe Trail.
The sign was well weathered and really hard to read so I translated it for you.
“Francois Xaver Aubry was born December 3, 1824 near Quebec. In 1843 at 18, he left his home and moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he began working as a clerk for a French Canadian merchant company.”
“In 1846 lured by the talk of trade making money and adventure on the Santa Fe Trail, he gave up his job as a clerk and became a full-time trader. By 1850, Aubry had traveled multiple routes with the goal of finding the shortest sand-free path that provided adequate water and wood. In 1851 he found it establishing what became known as the Aubry Cutoff.”
“From 1846 to 1854 Aubry was among the business most influential merchants on the Santa Fe Trail. His caravans were usually large and his speed and reliability in getting goods to the right market ahead of others was legendary. The average length of Aubry’s trips was 37 days while other merchants would take up to 90 days to deliver their goods to Santa Fe.”
“Along with this mercantile reputation he developed a talent for individual travel. Aubry’s 730 mile trip on horseback from Santa Fe to Independence Missouri in the **** days…”
The rest of the sign is indistinguishable.
The grassland was amazing. I’ve never been so far away from everything. It is a truly wide open place.
There were other markers laying out the Santa Fe Trail.
We crossed in to Oklahoma.
We decided to head to the Washita Battlefield National Historic Site. I’ve never been but have wanted to go several times. The shortcut through Texas was really terrible. We battled the 18-wheelers hauling pre-hamburgers and pre-steaks at mach 2 on the roads throughout the panhandle of Texas. I’m pretty sure most of them should be arrested and thrown into jail for the speed they were traveling and the absolute utter disregard for other drivers. Seriously we were nearly rammed by two 18-wheelers going well over 80 mph. There’s no way they could have stopped if something happened.
We stopped in one these cattle towns and made some sandwiches and ate lunch. Every town had a silo like this one.
The Washita Battlefield National Historic Site is a real nice museum and was free! We stopped and watched an informative video about the event. We looked at the artifacts and read some of the interesting perspectives of the times. There would be a recollection of a white person and a recollection of a native person showing the two sides of the same event. Very informative.
We then went down the road to the actual site. The river has moved since the original event but with a little imagination you can put yourself there that fateful winter day.
We took the two lane highways home. I can tell you as we came back into civilization I actually longed for the wide open spaces of the plains. The rest of the trip was uneventful and we managed to get home without dying.
Day Two
This is part two of the Capulin Volcano Northwest Passage. We went to meet Fall and were not disappointed. She was in full force on the Volcano with a North wind putting a chill on things.
Warning this is a huge post with tons of pictures.
We drove to the Volcano. We stopped and took the obligatory picture with the National Park sign for Capulin Volcano. We headed on to the visitor center and paid the admission fee to the cute Park Ranger. We then drove to the parking lot near the top.
We hiked to the top. You can see a mountain range in Colorado and Black Mesa from the top. There are well marked signs that explain the lay of the land. We were woefully unready for the active Cougar area. It was a relief to find out they were warning us about the big cats and not 60 plus year old women.
We left the volcano and headed to Folsom, New Mexico. We stopped for some pictures at the Folsom Hotel and felt the call of the old west in the sleepy little town. A picture in the hotel window alerted us to the fact the Hole in the Wall Gang once frequented the area.
We headed toward Des Moines, New Mexico to pick up our gravel road to the state intersection. I feel like now is a good point to caution you about the availability of gasoline in these remote towns. We knew there would be few options and keeping a full tank was a priority. We even brought extra Gerry cans and filled them when we thought the chance to fill up might be in doubt. If you are planning this trip keep in mind how many miles you have planned to drive. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to know what kind of range you can get on a tank of fuel when you are driving 20-40 miles per hour. This is where I learned the fuel gauge on the BWB is not very indicative of the amount of fuel in the tank. It is weighted a little heavily toward the lower end. That will need to be investigated again.
We stopped for a pit stop in Des Moines and then out on to the plain to see what we could see. What we learned about electronic maps and how they are incredibly incorrect. There were several times where a road was named wrong or didn’t even exist.
Erik remembered there was a more scenic route and we made our way to find it. Turned out to be a very beautiful canyon to drive through. The roads were labelled like highways but were made of gravel. The driving was not technical. If it had rained the night before it might have been much more challenging.
We made Oklahoma and turned toward the corner of the state’s monument. We found it up the road from the Black Mesa trail-head. We hung out a while and took pictures. We also planned our next stop. In lieu of Black Mesa State Park we opted for Picture Canyon in Colorado. I’m so glad we did.
We left out of the Black Mesa area turned North at the “dinosaur bone” and headed toward Picture Canyon. On the way we stopped to see a rather large tarantula. He became very friendly and crawled up the leg of one of Erik’s friends. Whole lotta NO in that for me.
We also turned back to see where another apparent overlander had taken an unmarked trail. By the time we got back to him he was already headed back to the road. He said there was nothing to see up there except a windmill. I didn’t want to seem like we were following him or wanted him to feel uncomfortable so we kept it short and went in different directions.
If there hadn’t been signs telling us there was a canyon we may have never found it. It is literally a canyon in the middle of the Comanche National Grassland. You drive on rolling hills and out of nowhere there’s a canyon.
There are also caves. The caves are now caged off. The bats in the area are struggling to survive. The white-nosed fungus is basically Ebola for bats and scientist are trying to figure out what the cause is. Humans are one of the first culprits thus the cages at the entrances to caves throughout America.
We saw all the petroglyphs listed on the displays at the trailhead. It was a nice walk. We returned to camp and started dinner (seasoned chicken tenders, potatoes, rolls with honey butter). We ate and had some beers waiting for the big show. The big show was a completely dark sky with no light pollution. We could see the Milky Way and a bazillion stars. The meteor shower did not disappoint as well. We saw so many satellites we stopped even mentioning them.
We settled in for some much needed sleep after a long day on the trail.
I hope you enjoyed the galleries and I’ll post up the third day soon. Thanks for the retweets and forwarding the post.
Capulin Volcano Part Three Here
Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering
I really wanted to get out on the trail this fall and I felt like it was my turn to plan and lead a trip. I looked for a non-OU-Football weekend and found two one in September and one in November. The initial inspiration for the Capulin Volcano trip was seeing a similar trip in OutdoorX4 magazine. We had some interest in the trip from several people in the Oklahoma Land Rover Owners group but in the end only two of us made the commitment to the overland adventure.
Day One
Mr. Fisher and I got the Big White Bus loaded and started out on a pleasant Saturday morning and headed to our rendezvous with Erik O’Neal and his Discovery 2 in Okarche, Oklahoma. Continue reading “Capulin Volcano and the Northwest Passage 2016, Part One (Post #564) 1/17/2017”
The boot of the Big White Bus is a mishmash of bags and lose gear. You can see from this picture that I carry around quite a bit of kit.
In no particular order, mostly because there isn’t really any order in the rear of the vehicle right now, you may find…
Continue reading “Organizing the Boot (Post #543) 9/18/2015”
I saw this fused glass Bigfoot at the Midsummer’s Night Fair a couple of weeks ago. I was there to see the Oh! Johnny Girls.
They were as awesome as I expected them to be. But the Bigfoot Talisman haunted me on the bicycle ride home. I told Mr. Fisher that it was imparitive that I get one for the Big White Bus.
So I checked with Mrs. Fisher who had very adepty stalked them and hooked me up with them on Facebook. I found out they were setting up at the Oklahoma City Arts Festival. I dragged Mrs. Okierover to the festival to pick up a fused glass Oklahoma necklace for her and my talisman.
They both look great and now when go down to Southeast Oklahoma to cruise the back roads like outlaws, we won’t have any trouble with Bigfoot due to the supreme mojo of the talisman.
I urge you to check out Jim Shelley’s work. I know you will see something you like. And if you want protection from Bigfoot while in the bush, this is the only place you can get a fused glass Bigfoot Talisman.
Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.