Monday, July 7, 2008 | by nathan

The Great Oklahoma Road Trip 2008 #2: The Panhandle (Part One)

We’re back. My mind’s all blown apart by the awesomeness of this past weekend, so much so that I may have difficulty putting the whole trip into words. I’ll at least be posting photos about it all week and probably into next. As to the story, so much happened this weekend that I’ve decided to write it one day at a time, effectively dividing the whole thing into three parts. Today’s installment concerns Friday, July 4, 2008, the first day of the trip. I’ll try to keep mostly with the basics, though also let me be sure, right off the bat, to point you to the photos of the entire journey over at Flickr. Just because, well, this is going to be a long one. So if you want to skip right to the photos, that’s fine.

We left Oklahoma City at about 9 a.m. on Friday morning, stopping only in Woodward for gas and to let the dogs pee (a full report on how Sam did on such a long trip is coming on Friday). I don’t think I need to belabor the point that I find no place on Earth more beautiful than western Oklahoma, an opinion that places me in a very small minority of human beings, I know, but just driving up through the plains was, to me, calming, and if we’d just spent the entire weekend in the car kicking around western Oklahoma, I’d have been perfectly happy. But, we had places to be. Still, we did get this photo of a wind farm outside Woodward:

Our first official stop, the first thing I’d been dying to see for quite some time, was Optima Lake, which, on any map of Oklahoma, looks something like how our Garmin showed it:

Looks like a very large lake, right? Here’s what Optima Lake *actually* looks like:

The lake has never reached more than 5% of its planned capacity. An Army Corps of Engineers project, the lake is one of the earliest examples of unintended environmental consequences - the dam and adjacent state park were built just as the aquifer was being tapped more and more to attend to local agricultural needs. It is one of the most eerie places I’ve ever been. A complete state park was built along with the dam, including at least two campgrounds, recreational and picnic areas, a boat ramp, and scenic drives. The problem is that since the lake never filled up, none of this was ever used, and now the entire place has a very post-apocalyptic kind of feel, like what America’s roadways would’ve looked like after a 1950’s-style nuclear holocaust:

I’m gathering thoughts, facts and notes for a story I’m going to pitch to either the Gazette or Oklahoma Today, because the whole thing is so fascinating to me, this monument to what America once tried to be. Also, since a great deal of my novel is set in northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas, I’m adding Optima Lake into my scenery; it’s too ripe a topic.

By the time we left Optima Lake, it was lunch time, and, while perusing a directory of Guymon businesses earlier in the week, I had learned that Guymon - has a Taco Tico. This was our next stop, for lunch:

So, after gorging ourselves on delicious Mexican food and choco-tacos that melted all over our faces in the midday heat, we fueled up and got back on the road. The Panhandle is, to me, an absolutely fascinating stretch of land, though I can see how someone might go crazy driving through it. It’s the flattest part of the state; probably one of the flattest parts of the world.

I find it oddly haunting, the huge skies, the fields. Also, we were having some weird music moments in our car - "Vein of Stars" by the Flaming Lips came on, and I was almost freaked out by how perfectly the song seemed to complement the landscape. Both are haunting and beautiful. Even though I never tired of seeing the plains flying past, I was excited, as was everyone else, when we finally reached our next stop, Boise City:

We only stayed a few minutes, long enough to check out the bombing memorial and the courthouse, and to let the dogs go pee, because our final destination, Kenton, was only 35 miles away. Along the stretch of road we watched the tabletop-flat landscape begin to roll and fall away into canyons and rise up into mesas. A high-plains thunderstorm blew up as we approached Kenton:

We arrived at about 4 p.m. Mountain Time. Kenton is the only town in Oklahoma that is not on Central Time (though, technically, it’s located within the Central Time Zone). We’d reserved a cabin at the Kenton Mercantile, but it had been cancelled at the last minute. Luckily Jayson had managed to reserve us two rooms at the Black Mesa Bed & Breakfast.

The proprietor of the B&B, Vicki Roberts, met us outside and instantly I knew we were in for a great stay, that staying with Vicki would be less like renting a room and more like visiting beloved family. I was right on all counts. Vicki greeted us warmly and showed us to the Bunkhouse, where we were staying. Only the screen doors on the bunkhouse were closed, and as the rain began to move in, you could smell it richly in the air. The midday heat completely abated as the shower fell. Vicki just put a new front porch on the main house of the bed and breakfast - which also sits on a working cattle and horse ranch - and we, Vicki’s family and the other guests, sat on the porch and watched it rain.

Rains like those are a welcome sight; Cimarron County has been in a drought of late, which tends to set the people who live there on edge; this was, after all, the heart of the Dust Bowl in the early 20th century:

The rain lasted only half an hour or so, and it cooled everything down; suddenly the evening felt less like July and more like early April. Vicki and her husband, Monty Joe, had invited us into town for a Fourth of July celebration the town was having at the senior center. We arrived and were greeted with warm conversation and some of the best food you could imagine:

That’s a burger (does anyone else put chips on their burgers? I DO!), beans, a jalapeno pickle, deviled eggs, a bowl of fresh watermelon, and Country Time Pink Lemonade. And for dessert? I chose a piece of coconut cream pie, and some of Vicki’s homemade peach ice cream:

This is the kind of meal that I remember having growing up during the summer, and it made me feel so happy, so nostalgic and connected and, well, dammit, patriotic. I love this America, where people invite strangers along when their town has a cookout, and they go to lots of trouble but nothing is pretentious and everyone’s just so darn polite and genuine. It made me not want to ever leave Kenton.

After dinner the four of us walked around town for awhile. Kenton’s not a big town, so we were able to see most of it. The sun was back out by this time, and the rain had passed but the upflow was giving us a cool, rain-scented breeze. A perfect evening for a walk. We got to see the Merc, which was closed due to a family emergency (hence our cancellation):

After we walked around a bit we returned to the Bed and Breakfast, where we sat on the porch and watched the most amazing sunset:

Things got a little dicey when Vicki & Monty Joe returned from town and Vicki saw the Obama 2008 sticker on my car; she pulled me aside and urged me - begged me, even - to at least promise to pray about my choice of candidate. Someone else could’ve done this to me and I’d have been offended; I could tell, though, that Vicki was being genuine, and not really confrontational, and so I assured her that I do pray about my vote, every day, and that I felt good about Obama. It threw me for a loop a little bit but confirmed to me even more that this stay at the Bed and Breakfast had been a good choice; I really did feel like a part of the family at the Roberts’ place, even if I was a bit of a black sheep.

I’d brought along a brown grocery sack full of stuff I’d picked from my garden before the trip - about eight cucumbers, two dozen tomatoes and a half a bushel of fresh green beans. To show Vicki that there were no hard feelings, I gave her the entire bag.

The last item on our agenda that day was to drive out to the place where Oklahoma meets Colorado and New Mexico. There’s a marker there, and Jayson has been telling me since we met - ten years ago - that I need to see the night skies out there. On the drive out we came across a large racoon making his way across a cattle guard, and two large deer, including a many-point buck, that dashed over the fence beside the road.

Jaye’s right about the skies; I’ve never seen so many stars gathered in one place. As we sat, staring upward, I felt compelled to whisper, as a sense of holiness and wonder such as I’ve not felt in a long, long time went through me like a slow-moving bullet, rendering me speechless and humble. It had been a day full of miracles, happiness, love, and beauty; I said very little while we sat out there, choosing instead to send silent prayers into the skies that seemed at once so close you could touch them, and to go on forever.

TO BE CONTINUED…

The Great Oklahoma Road Trip 2008