Today was a sightseeing day, and did we ever see some sights. It's hard to explain the mind-boggling grandeur of rocky hills and big, sweeping valleys. Creeks flooding the feet of boulders bigger than you can climb on, all jumbled up in a pile of rock and roll ruin. Hard...shall I say, impossible?
Yeah, I've been places that were, on paper, more beautiful. It's hard to beat the lush green hills of Oahu; the valleys of far western California were bigger in a way that distorted vision; the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone held secrets far in the distant folds and shelves.
But here, in the here and now, there wasn't anything I wanted more than to stay. If I'd been alone with boots, water and a snack, I'd have taken off cross country just to see what I could flush out of the grasses. I think this is called short-grass prairie...it looks barren but green and full, full, full of flowers. But you can walk across it with only a little difficulty and detour around the occasional prickly pear or brushy clump of woods.
I could be wrong about that. The little walking I did was more like hopping from stone to stone. The rocks are weathered, sometimes to an extreme, but they're rough enough to make simple walking tricky. It would take twice as long to cross a valley as I expected, and in the doing I'd scare away all birds, snakes and creatures in a mile-wide circle. Best I didn't.
Enough of the trying to write poetic. Here's what we did--drove due east on the very good gravel road on the other side of the highway from the park entrance. After some time, it merges into 49 and soon enters the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, by crossing a cattle guard. And then we started seeing herds of longhorns in clumps here and there.
We'd driven through the refuge the previous night, on the way back from eating, and found the longhorns and bison clustered in areas where the speed limit drops from 45 to 30. We wondered, then, how they knew where to place the speed limit signs...did they feed the animals at those locations?
But on Sunday they seemed to be more widely scattered all over. We took a detour to see the picnic areas and check out three or so lakes. One had a group of people fishing at the dam where the water was spilling over. Another was way down in a valley below the parking area, too far to scramble unless I packed everything into the backpack and let Molly loose while I crawled and squeezed down a very steep jumble of rock. Only at the third stop was the lake close to hand so that the dogs could wade out and get a drink...but that one had a picnic area with porta-potties and bunches of people picnicking. Too bad--pretty as it was, it was the least of the three.
We went on, stopping at the prairie dog town near the center of the area. Several cars were always stopped, looking at the little varmints, and I guess the constant tourist traffic had inured them to human interference. There was a wooden fence between the parking area and the town, and I guess most people took that as a hint they weren't supposed to go over into it. At any rate, the dogs were so accustomed to people just outside the fence that they didn't let out a peep. (You can call it a bark, if you like, but it sounds more like a bird peep.) Normally a dog town is peeping alarm from the moment a human comes near. As you walk along, one dog hill takes up the call and it precedes you for your whole time moseying along.
But these were eerily silent. Fat and happy, I'd say. I bet they'd have sung a different tune if my dog came out of the car.
By then we'd made several stops, and I'd left my drinking water back at the Mammoth on Wheels. So we headed on out of the park to get a soda. That done, we went to drive to the top of Mount Scott.
On the way up, we passed exactly two people walking up the road ad one person bicycling it. I think that if there were a decent walking path up, more people would have chosen to make the hike. It would have been a lot of fun...but only if you didn't have to skirt the edge of a narrow, heavily trafficked, two-lane road
It was really nice up there. The view, for a long way in every direction, magnificent. But meaningless. if only a single person of the hundreds who visited every day got his mind blown with awesome wow! It would have been better than I imagine.
On the way back we stopped at a site used for an annual Easter Pageant. Cool place, if you're into Holy Land kind of stuff. Grazing on the grounds was a very un-Palestinian denizen:
And we saw this really cool lizard, two of them:
Birds for the park:
Western Kingbird, Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher, Ladder backed woodpecker, Common Grackle, American Crow, Turkey Vulture, Canada Geese, Lark Sparrow LB despite it being extremely common all over, Purple Martin, Mississippi Kite, House Sparrow, Red-tailed Hawk, Mockingbird, Brown Thrasher, Nighthawk.
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