Favorite Oklahoma places, even more remote

On the trail up Black Mesa, about a mile and a half into the hike

You gotta want to go there.  It's not a "day-trip." More like two, or three. It's as far from Oklahoma City as you can get and be in Oklahoma. It won't be quick. It won't be easy. The drive can be mind-numbing before rewarding in the last few miles on SH 525 west of Boise City. The hike will take most of the day.

Black Mesa, Oklahoma's highest point at the tip of the panhandle, has got to be one of my top two favorite places in the state, along with Monument Hill.
It tells you a lot about me that I like remote places...so remote even cell phones don't work, thank God. So remote you can see a long way, have time to think, listen, smell, imagine, talk to your yourself and hear God answer.
Two years have passed since I made the 361-mile drive and the eight-mile hike, and a year since we went back for a night at Black Mesa Bed and Breakfast, where they hold hands and say grace before breakfast. 
It's not just Black Mesa of course, but the whole area, actually in the Mountain time zone. 

Black Mesa from the front porch of Black Mesa Bed and Breakfast

You can walk across the dry Cimarron, cruise though the almost ghost town of Kenton, cross a bridge into New Mexico and find 17 miles of unpaved state highway leading west, or turn north on dirt roads to dinosaur tracks and the three state marker where Oklahoma, Colorado and New Mexico meet. There's more, still to be discovered including Indian petroglyphs and ruts of the Santa Fe trail Cimarron cutoff. That's another trip.

Black Mesa sunset, 9 by 12, painted on the porch of the bed and breakfast.

The hike is eight miles, and when you get to the top, sign the register in the ammo box, lean against the granite monument erected by the Tulsa Tribune, marking distances to the other states, and telling stories. You can see forever.
But mostly you can breathe, really see the stars, and be free.
Here are the links to articles and photos I wrote two years ago on this blog:

• "To the top of Oklahoma and back"
• "On top of Oklahoma"
• "Black Mesa sunset"
• "Geezer, God chat on top of Black Mesa"

(My other favorite places, with no ranking of preference, coming soon, in shorter articles,  scattered around the state. included will be three others in the northwest area--the so called Washita "battlefield," the Cimarron river cliffs at Freedom, Fort Reno and its cemetery at El Reno.)

On top of Oklahoma

Leaning against the Granite Monument, 4,972.97 feet above sea level.

I find it interesting that the late great Jenk Jones of the late great Tulsa Tribune did this. Detail of the East side.

Each side of the obelisk has data of distances--Texas 31 miles; Colorado; 4.1 miles,. New Mexico 1299 feet, Kansas, 53 miles E.N.E.. Distances to New York, 1,605 miles,  and Los Angeles, 895 miles. Names of the survey crew, information on the granite from Granite, Ok. In the top view, and below at the base on the side of the south side,at my feet is the 50 caliber metal shell box weighted down with lava rocks that holds the notebooks you can sign in with, which I did in the 2012 spiral..."Terry M. Clark, Edmond, OK March 19, 2012. 9:56 a.m."
That's because it was Mountain Time zone there. I started my two-hour hike at 9 a.m. Central Time and walked across zones.

Two hundred yards south of the monument you can walk to the edge of Black Mesa and look out over the Dry Cimarron river valley below.

In the distance looking southeast, upper middle, you can see the light reflecting off the tin roofs almost-ghost town of Kenton, more than 600 feet  below the rim of Black Mesa.

Look the other way and you see into New Mexico, with extinct volcanos Sierra Grande, left, and cinder cone Capulin, right, blue in the 60 miles distance, and the river bed winding into New Mexico. The tip of the rocks in the foreground is the edge of the 100-foot drop off of the lava cap that gives Black Mesa its name.

Post script. This is the "Dry Cimarron." Water rarely runs here, the head "waters" of the river I've canoed in near Guthrie, hundreds of miles down "stream." I stayed and Black Mesa Bed and Breakfast, a working ranch, and the "river" "runs" through its land. I took an evening nature walk down it, and found standing water and lots of foliage, which attract deer and turkey and other wildlife.