by John Jefferson
Half the fun in outdoor adventure is just getting there. In route to what would be my first successful deer hunt, accompanied by three favorite grad school classmates, we motored up Highway 71 in my ’55 Chevy, near Packsaddle Mountain. We’d seen a number of deer – mostly does. Bruce Monroe let out a yell, “Did you see that buck? He was tremendous!”
Not fully understanding the rules of the road to a deer hunt, I hit the brakes, made a U-turn and went back to see the buck that sounded like the model for the Hartford Insurance deer. We got to where we thought Monroe had seen the buck and stopped. There he was. A nice Hill Country eight-pointer, but nothing to drive around the courthouse with in the bed of your pickup on opening day. Two of the others laughed.
Monroe muttered, “Can’t even exaggerate a buck’s antlers without Jefferson calling your bluff.” I was branded.
Another time, stopping for breakfast somewhere south of Telluride, Colorado one morning at dawn, we were the first customers in a small café that had only a screen door. I ate the best waffle of my life and can still taste it.
But one of my favorite memories was on an unpaved shortcut through the Oklahoma Panhandle. We were heading to Colorado and had gone past the few good campsites in the Texas Panhandle. My wife found Black Mesa State Park on the Oklahoma map near the New Mexico line, so we adventured on north of Dalhart. Arriving at the sparsely occupied park after dark, we camped in our van under a large cottonwood tree. They have both tent and RV sites. At daylight, a hatch of white moths erupted right above us, filling the van. We found them in our gear the next three days. I even fished a while unsuccessfully. No, wait — the fishing was successful; just the catching wasn’t! When we went to the park office that morning to pay, not wanting to backtrack into Texas, we asked the park ranger if there was a shorter route to Colorado.
“There is,” he said, “but it’s a good ways down an unpaved road.”
Somehow, 30 miles of bad road seemed like a worthy challenge. We drove north to Kenton and headed west on Highway 456 through unfenced ranching country toward New Mexico.
We only met two vehicles; both drivers stared at us. But what a surprise!
We drove through what has to be Oklahoma’s answer to Monument Valley, although on a much smaller scale. Stone outcroppings 106 million years-old from the Jurassic period that dinosaurs probably rubbed up against rose upward from the desert floor. Tracks and bones are still there. Shockingly, ruggedly, beautiful. Totally unexpected. A year later, I returned that way to make sure I hadn’t just imagined it. I’d never heard of it before, nor since. You have to be going there to see it.
But it is a unique was to get to Colorado.
JJ
