A Dash through Panhandles

New Mexico volcano field dawn

The first light of day arrived as I crossed Raton pass into New Mexico. Consider it highly recommended. Signs warn of bears and elk crossing the mountains on either side of the state line, but the real danger was watching the sky, not the winding interstate. 

I would quickly turn east to face the dawn, although sunrise would be blunted by an array of thin clouds. The light show covered the field of extinct volcanoes across northern New Mexico, Capulin and Sierra Blanca standing tall and displaying some new tints on their pine-covered inclines. 

The show of colors lasted clear until Clayton.  I circled through Clayton, a new landmark for recreational weed with numerous dispensaries on its main street. I found more interesting places on its side streets, like Hotel Eklund, which has a second-floor patio restaurant that looks out upon the small city. Down the block, the Luna Theatre, one of the oldest movie theaters in the country, still operated. The squat, domed county courthouse stood across the railroad tracks that led to the town’s creation.

An unassuming string of Texas Panhandle towns followed. The only skyscrapers out this way are grain bins. The crossroads of Dumas disappeared after a quick Braum’s breakfast stop. A mix of paved and unpaved roads took me through some ripples in the seemingly flat country. 

I expected a city at Sanford and found myself on a two-lane road crossing the dam. Below sat a thin ribbon of the Canadian River that would soon run dry. The reservoir seemed healthy, lacking the bathtub ring on the rocks of past shorelines. On the often-dry Canadian River, whose salty waters rendered water non-potable before the dam, this much water qualified as an ocean. 

Red rock cliffs surrounded the reservoir. A number of free campgrounds in the Lake Meredith National Recreation Area would allow for some easy camping after a day of drivin. First, I had to take a long-awaited tour. 

Anyone can visit the Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument (the first in Texas, authorized by LBJ). The visitor center screens a documentary narrated by Native actor Wes Studi, numerous artifacts from the region, and a short hike. 

To really see what Alibates Flint has to offer, one must sign up for a guided tour. I had to call Ranger Elaine on Thursday to make sure I had a spot on the tour. Most of the monument is considered artifacts (anything that might have touched Native hands), so it remains accessibly only with permission. A caravan followed the ranger’s jeep two miles into the monument. 

Beyond a gate, the tour began. This Saturday’s hike had 13 participants, mostly from an Amarillo-area Boy Scout troop. To avoid any fines for damaging or stealing rocks or artifacts, the ranger recited the Boy Scout pledge – she had three boys who went through scouts. That warning – and mention of a $10,000 fine for tampering with artifacts - helped avoid any incidents on the hike. 

We ascended a mix of trails and stars to a ridge along the hills that ran above the reservoir. Native people had mined flint in the area into the last Ice Age. Alibates flint arrowheads/points had been found among Columbian mammoth bones harvested by the Clovis cultures. 

Flint quarry badlands

The flint was widely traded among other tribes, dispelling the belief in isolated pre-Columbian tribes. Native peoples always traded far and wide. Alibates flint points were highly valued, and the people who mined the flint were highly protective of their lucrative resource. In a way, the federal protection preserves the tradition. 

Signs of past cultures lie everywhere in the protected area, with small pits of mined flint, petroglyphs and a few excavated habitats similar to those elsewhere in the Southwest. The Antelope Creek people quarried the Alibates flint, a geological oddity only found within 20 miles of the Canadian River. The Panhandle culture thrived in the region from 1200-1450 A.D., its descendants moving out as the region grew drier and hotter. 

 Seasonal wetlands still arise where the Canadian enters its broad canyon. Not in winter, but in spring, wetlands would arise upstream of Lake Meredith. We could easily view the wild lands around Lake Meredith, and imagine the peoples who lived here millennia ago. 

To get the most of this Panhandle stop, I wanted to camp while the temperatures hovered in the seventies and Colorado struggled to get out of the forties. Campsites were free and abundant. I decided on Harbor Bay. Were the scouting troop not posted up at McBride Canyon, I might have gone there. That might have changed the trip trajectory. 

Deer lawn party near Harbor Bay

Heading to Harbor Bay, Fritch disappeared pretty quickly. Among the last houses before the road dipped down to the lakeshore, six white-tailed deer sat on a lawn, unconcerned with the traffic. Around 20 sites were spread out in clusters of 3-5 sites. Lakeside hiking trails left from the area. The view was tremendous. 

In the Texas Panhandle, one element refuses all calls to abate. The wind changed everything. Townes Can Zandt worked those winds into a verse about the West. The wind churned up Lake Meredith, and whitecaps pushed across surface. No boat dared those waters. I started to notice the few occupied campsites had hard-sided campers. 

The wind would not stop. I could barely put down a tarp (I pinned its corners under rocks) and the tent soon felt like a lost cause. I decided to cut bait on Harbor Bay and make a run north. On my way out, all but one of the deer had left the lawn. The last one paused slightly at my voice before vanishing into the scrubby vegetation. 

The last deer to flee

Without many options in Fritch, I headed north, hoping I could make Liberal by dark. The Panhandle turned into another string of towns I barely knew. Stinnett and Perrytown were bigger, but I barely paused with the sun dropping fast. The first few farm towns might be architecturally interesting. After a dozen or more, not so much. 

The last stretch crossed forty lonely miles of the Oklahoma Panhandle, the no-man’s land eventually added the Indian Territory, later Oklahoma. The sunset and streaking clouds demanded a short stop in the region of cattle and wind turbines. 

 A patchwork of lights on the darkened plain, Liberal, Kansas loomed immediately across the Oklahoma border. A series of U.S. routes crossed here, producing some surprising Saturday night. After cutting through a yard of trailers and landing on one of Liberal's main drags, I picked the local Best Western and called it good. 

A curious thing occurred after I had dinner and settled into the hotel. I couldn’t sleep; all the daylight hours and hundreds of driving miles had not sapped my energy. For wandering, the strip malls of Liberal did not offer anything as riveting as the flint quarries from earlier in the day. That bright canyonland hike, barely six hours earlier, already felt like the accomplishment of a different day.

Texas Panhandle sunset

Oklahoma Panhandle twilight