Meador Manor

Double Loop, Days 4-5: Durango to Ouray

Posted on July 2, 2022 by Granger Meador

June 12-13, 2022 | Photo Album

Bernalillo was already infamous to Wendy and me before we actually stopped there. On a previous trip to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, Trixie the GPS app repeatedly mangled the pronunciation of that small town just north of Albuquerque. This time we actually stopped in Bernalillo for lunch on our way from Santa Fe to Durango, Colorado.

Consuela De La Morrela is a Mexican cleaning maid on Family Guy who is known for saying No…no (and for being obsessed with Lemon Pledge). Wendy was reminded of her repeatedly on our trip by the pandemic residue, including labor shortages and supply chain issues.

A prime example was when we walked into a Yelp-recommended Mexican restaurant in Bernalillo. Wendy asked for chicken tacos.

No.

Okay, beef, then. Can I get a tamale?

No.

And the beef tacos we received were something to be forgotten. But we were just getting started on the Nos from closed businesses or requests that could not be met:

Can we eat in the Wendy’s in Durango? No.
Okay, we wound up at Applebee’s, and Wendy would like a Dr. Pepper. No.
Let’s return to our old favorite hotel in Pagosa Springs. No.
Okay, we’ll stay here at the Riverwalk instead. Do you have an elevator? No.
Can we eat at La Plaza in Walsenburg? No.
Okay, how about Tina’s Family Cafe? No.
It’s so hot here in Trinidad; let’s get some ice cream at that shop. No.
We’ve finally reached the hotel. Is our room ready? No.
I would love a coffee mug made in Colorado. Are any of your mugs not made in China? No.
Let’s grab a bite at Clayton’s Hotel Eklund. No.
We have a reservation here for a suite. No.
Does this hotel have a decent breakfast? No. No. No. No. No.

But we were persistent and did not allow the parade of Nos ruin our trip; a sense of humor helps!

To Durango

Back in 2011, I drove alone from Durango to Albuquerque via highway 371 south out of Farmington. I remembered how deserted and desolate that road had been. So I wondered if the stretch of highway 550 a bit east of that through northwestern New Mexico would be equally forbidding. But it turned out to be a four-lane road with plenty of restroom stops and nice scenery. We would be staying on 550 as far north as Ouray, but we would first make a stop in Durango.

After many miles in the dry high country, it was a bit of a relief to descend to the San Juan river valley at Bloomfield before we entered Colorado. For miles I had noticed the telltale signs of a pipeline buried to the east of the highway, and we noticed compressor stations and a large Harvest Midstream plant.

Well, it turns out that the San Juan Basin east and south of Bloomfield has over 40,000 natural gas wells, which are the red dots on the map below.

Bar D Chuckwagon

Wendy and I stayed in Durango back in 2015, enjoying the Dirty Deeds at the Depot melodrama at the Strater Theater (sadly discontinued) and of course a ride on the wonderful Durango-Silverton steam train. But I had been on my own in 2011 for the Bar D Chuckwagon show just north of Durango. So I bought us both tickets for the show to share the experience with Wendy.

Cy Scarborough moved to Durango in 1969 after entertaining at the Flying W Chuckwagon show in Colorado Springs for 25 years. He, along with Jim Blanton and Roy “Buck” Teeter, founded the Bar D Chuckwagon Suppers north of Durango that has entertained tourists for over 50 years. I had seen Cy perform one of his humorous songs in 2011, but he passed away in 2020 at age 93.

But Gary Cook still flat-picks his guitar for the show and Matt Palmer still plays what is described as “his little fiddle” by humorist and upright bass player Joel Racheff. Seeing those three were still in the show reassured me that we would have a great time. For this season they were joined by Danny Rogers and David Bradley.

Danny Rogers, Matt Palmer, David Bradley, Gary Cook, and Joel Racheff

We enjoyed our chicken and beef with baked potatoes, baked beans, biscuits, applesauce, and spice cake. The performers are also servers, and I noticed a tall fellow offering up lemonade at the tables had an incredibly deep “radio voice” – sure enough, that was Danny Rogers. He moved to the Bar D from the similar Bar J show in Jackson Hole which recently closed after 44 years. His incredible bass performance starts off ~~Ghost Riders~~ Reindeer in the Sky in this clip from an old Bar J Wranglers show:

The show also featured champion yodeler David Bradley. Before the show, we had browsed the shops, and Wendy bought a geode to be hammered open later. After the show, we returned to the Homewood Suites, which was definitely nicer than the Best Western we had stayed at back in 2015, where we had crammed into a small upstairs room, dragging our luggage up an exterior stairway.

The Million Dollar Highway

Back in 2011, I had driven the scenic but intimidating famous stretch of highway 550 south of Ouray, heading southward in my 2001 Toyota Camry sedan. This time I would drive it both ways in Wendy’s 2019 Honda Odyssey minivan.

But before we headed north on 550, we walked around the tiny Botanic Gardens in Durango and along a stretch of its trail alongside the Animas River. We ended up having lunch at a Subway, after a No for dining inside their Wendy’s. Then we headed north towards Silverton, which we had previously visited via the narrow-gauge railroad’s steam train.

We negotiated the Coal Bank and Molas passes to Silverton, with me pulling over near Lime Creek for the vistas.

Wendy also scanned the ground for sparkly rocks and pretty flowers.

We pulled over again at Molas Pass, enjoyed a pit stop in Silverton, and then headed on the Million Dollar Highway toward the Red Mountains.

In the early 1880s, valuable columns of silver ore called “pipes” were discovered in the Red Mountain valley. By 1883 nearly 40 mines were sending silver ore to smelters. The mining area’s heyday lasted two decades with silver, lead, zinc, copper, and gold extracted that would be worth over $250 million today.

Red Mountain has three peaks, with the iron ore that covers their surfaces giving them their distinctive color.

The towns of Silverton to the south and Ouray to the north were entry points into the district. A road from Ouray was completed in 1883 and would eventually become the Million Dollar Highway. The geography was particularly challenging for railroads, but a line from Silverton reached the mining camp of Ironton in 1887 and Albany by 1889. That allowed medium and low-grade ore to be sent to smelters in Durango and Pueblo. That 18-mile narrow-gauge railroad was called the “Rainbow Route” because it arched across the mountain divide like a rainbow in the sky. Its chief engineer said it was “the steepest, the crookedest, and the best paying road in Colorado”.

You can visit what remains of the Idarado Mine, which consolidated claims from several old mines in 1939. The Telluride Mining Company acquired several other old mines, and near the end of World War II, the two mining companies connected below ground. Both were gone by 1978, and little remains of the towns in the district, with only about 50 structures still standing and the outline of the old railroad grade barely visible.

We then navigated through the Uncompahgre Gorge, cut by the namesake river and Red Mountain Creek just south of Ouray. In Ute, uncompahgre means “rocks that make water red”. The highway there is particularly impressive, cut through the steep cliffs high above the river with no guard rails. The river flows into a deep box canyon at the north end of the gorge; we would visit that canyon the following day.

Below us, nestled deep between the surrounding mountains, was Ouray, the subject of the next post.

Photo Album | Double Loop, Days 1-4

Posted in music, photos, travel | Leave a comment

Double Loop, Days 1-4: Kansas & New Mexico

Posted on July 2, 2022 by Granger Meador

June 9-12, 2022 | Photo Album

June is when Wendy and I usually escape Oklahoma for an adventure out west. As the initial Omicron variants of COVID waned, I considered flying to southern Oregon to enjoy the coast and the redwoods in northern California. But the cost of the flights was too high with skyrocketing fuel prices.

So I opted to return to southwestern Colorado with a few nights in Ouray as the centerpiece. I briefly drove through it in July 2011 when taking the San Juan Skyway route, and I had filed away the possibility of returning to explore it. Over a decade later, that ambition was finally realized as part of a giant figure-8 loop we drove across Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado.

Trailer Trash Tammy

Before the pandemic, Wendy and I enjoyed a live performance in Arkansas by Randy Rainbow, a YouTuber that Wendy discovered in the Trump years. Wendy has also enjoyed the ribald humor of Chelcie Lynn as Trailer Trash Tammy on YouTube, so she bought us tickets to a live show of hers in Kansas City. That event kicked off our vacation.

Rather than the usual routes through Kansas, I opted to steer the minivan up along Interstate 49 in Missouri this time for the journey to Country Club Plaza in Kansas City. We dined at the Cheesecake Factory and then checked in to the Courtyard by Marriot. A little window above the bed afforded a view of the nearby Plaza.

Country Club Plaza view from our hotel room

Then we headed to the Uptown Theater for the show, where we may have been the only masked members of the audience. We enjoyed the middle segment by Libbie Higgins the most, but you’ll have to ask me in person if you want me to recite any of her piquant observations.

Chelcie Lynn, Tina Dybal, and Libbie Higgins

The next day we had lunch at Stroud’s in Overland Park before heading to our next hotel room in Dodge City. That would break up the long drive from Kansas City, MO to Santa Fe, NM. Along the way, we stopped in Topeka.

Mulvane Art Museum

Joab R. Mulvane, 1837-1929, came to Kansas in 1876. He was the president of at least nine railroads and presided over the Chicago, Kansas and Western Railway Company when it built over 900 miles of rail lines for the Santa Fe. In 1922, Mulvane pledged a gift to build an eponymous Art Museum at Washburn University, and the building opened to the public in 1924. Its interior was replaced after a 1966 tornado destroyed or heavily damaged every building on the campus.

Wendy and I were amused by how an old cigarette vending machine had been repurposed as an Art-o-Mat.

Wendy enjoyed Frosty Morning by John Fabian Carlson and Sun, Sand, and Shadow by Frank V. Dudley.

My favorite work was hanging in a conference room: Canto No. 20 by Cheryl Wall.

We rolled onward to a Best Western in Dodge City. We had already seen enough of Dodge in a previous visit, and quickly departed the next morning for the long roll down across Kansas and the Oklahoma Panhandle, through northeast New Mexico to loop around the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo mountains to Santa Fe. I played Bob Wills’ & Tommy Duncan’s 1960 album Together Again as we rolled through the Panhandle. When Tommy sang Dusty Skies, Wendy remarked how perfect it was for the setting:

Dusty skies I can’t see nothing in sight
Good old Dan you’ll have to guide me right
If we lose our way the cattle will stray
And we’ll lose them all tonight
Cause all of the grass and water’s gone
We’ll have to keep the cattle moving on

Sand blowing I just can’t breathe in this air
I thought it would soon be clear and fair
But dust storms played hell with land and folks as well
Got to be moving somewhere
Hate to leave the old ranch so bare
I’ve got to be moving somewhere

Get along doggies we’re moving off of this range
I never thought as how I’d make the change
The blue skies have failed so we’re on our last trail
Underneath these dusty skies
These ain’t tears in my eyes
Just sand from these dusty skies

Cindy Walker wrote that song in the mid-1930s. She was just a teenager, inspired by newspaper accounts of the Dust Bowl. Cindy went on to have top 10 hits spread over five decades. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys eventually recorded over 50 of her songs, including Bubbles in My Beer. More than 500 of Walker’s songs have been recorded and her songs made the Top 40 charts in country or pop more than 400 times.

DoorDashing in Santa Fe

I noticed that Boise City no longer featured the courthouse square display about the accidental dummy bombing there in World War II. There isn’t much else of interest in Boise City, so maybe it will be restored someday.

We were glad to finally roll into Santa Fe that evening on the Old Pecos Trail. We were unwilling to brave the crowd at Tomasita’s, both out of concern about the circulating Omicron variants and being road-weary. So we just had DoorDash deliver our delicious meals to our nearby Casita Bonita. It was delightful to enjoy them in the peaceful courtyard.

The next morning we drove to the Santa Fe Plaza for some shopping and then looped around the Valles Caldera on our drive to Durango, Colorado for a chuck wagon music show that night. I’ll cover that in the next post.

Photo Album | Double Loop, Days 4-5

Posted in art, photos, travel | Leave a comment

Not Much of a Lawn Boy

Posted on May 21, 2022 by Granger Meador

May 21, 2022

I have never particularly enjoyed yardwork. I mow the yard weekly in season, hand-rake and mulch the leaves once or twice per year, almost never edge or string trim, and viciously assault the greenery on occasion as what I call pruning but others denounce as butchery. However, my recent purchase of my first electric lawnmower has me pondering my sordid past in lawncare.

When I was in elementary school we lived in Bethany, a suburb of Oklahoma City, in the Cross Timbers. That is a strip of land from southeastern Kansas across central Oklahoma to the middle of Texas. It has coarse and sandy soil so that the woodlands are mostly post and blackjack oak. If you have been to Osage Hills State Park west of Bartlesville, or you’ve been bored and looked at much of the scenery along the Turner Turnpike between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, then you’ve observed that biome.

My parents’ home in Bethany sat on the middle of three lots they owned which had over seventy blackjack oaks at the time…my father counted them.

They produced an immense amount of leaves, and my late friend Gene Freeman and I loved raking them into piles and pathways to race around in my pedal car and his Big Wheel. Here’s a photo of Gene and me in first grade in the Cross Timbers. We were best friends through sixth grade, even though his family moved southwest after first grade, and he went to a different school. Almost every Saturday Gene’s mother would drive him over to my house, or my mother would drive me over to theirs to play.

Here’s Mom in the front yard during our first autumn at the house in Bethany. All of those leaves and many, many more would soon be falling, prompting Dad to buy a leaf shredder to try to keep up with them.

I was amused that the first photo of our former home in Google Maps shows several dozen bags of leaves in front. The house is now a dark green instead of red, it now has a carport, and the people that bought the house from my folks built a new home on one of the side lots. But several of the blackjack oaks are still there, and their leaves must be dealt with.

When we lived there, grass still poked up amidst the leaves and sand, and Dad used an old riding lawnmower to handle the three lots. He would disengage the blades and let Gene and me drive the mower around. Gene absolutely loved it, while I was only mildly entertained. I wasn’t surprised that Gene eventually traded in his Big Wheel for a motorcycle, while my pedal car led me to sedans.

The dust and allergies from all of those oak leaves were a major reason we moved a little over a mile east as I entered junior high. Gene and the oak leaves receded into the past, and in high school I mowed my parents’ hilly yard in Windsor Hills with a red self-propelled reel mower. It looked something like the one shown here and was the last reel mower, and the last self-propelled one, that I ever used.

Dad had me collect the clippings in the hopper, dumping it repeatedly into bags to set at the curb. A decade after graduating from high school, I was renting a house in Bartlesville and needed a mower of my own for the first time. Naturally my Greatest Generation father found something cheap at a garage sale: a Lawn-Boy with a D-400 two-stroke engine.

My eyes narrow to slits whenever I see that distinctive green rectangular cowling with its two-finger vertical recoil starter and primer button. While Dad loved Lawn-Boys, I wasn’t a fan. The D-400 engine was manufactured by the Outboard Marine Corporation, which also produced distinctive Evinrude and Johnson boat motors. Two-stroke engines have no lubrication system, so you have to mix oil with the gasoline, and they produce a lot of noise and pollution. But they are cheap!

I’ve never been one to adjust a carburetor or replace a spark plug, so when the Lawn-Boy quit one day, I happily gave it back to my father for him to mess with and bought a four-stroke push lawnmower. It was quieter and less smoky, using regular gas without added oil. I had to drain the lubricating oil from it each winter and replace it each spring, but overall it was a big improvement.

At the rent house, I’d given up on bagging, simply side-discharging the crabgrass clippings. But in 1994 when I bought a home in Arrowhead Acres that had a pretty shaded fescue lawn out front, and lots of leaves blowing in that clogged the flowerbeds each autumn, I decided to mulch everything.

In 2010 the metal housing for the rotary blade rusted out and a wheel came off. So I checked Consumer Reports and ordered a Husqvarna with a Kohler engine. Or maybe it was a Kohler with a Husqvarna engine…I certainly don’t care which. When that mower quit suddenly in 2016, I didn’t try to fix it, as I hadn’t been all that happy with it. Instead I ordered a Cub Cabet SC100 push mower from Home Depot, which I used through the spring of 2022.

But I truly don’t take care of my lawnmowers. A neighbor once borrowed one of my mowers and was sufficiently taken aback that he took off the blade to have it sharpened! I used to be sure to run them dry of gasoline for winter, but then I just started purchasing ethanol-free gas and leaving it in the tank year-round, and I have only changed the oil in the Cub Cadet every other year.

The Cub Cadet lived up to its moniker when it came to mulching raked piles of leaves, with me having to nurse that wimp through the process. And in recent months it got noticeably louder, even through the earplugs I’ve used for years when mowing, plus it developed a vibration. I could turn it over and check on the condition of the blade, but I really don’t like the @#$% thing.

So I thought about getting yet another gas push mower even though the two on hand probably only need a bit of engine and blade work. But then I’d still be using a loud mower that needed more care than I wish to provide. Noise irritates me and my hearing is going, and avoiding noise is why I’ve always raked rather than use a leafblower.

Hmmm…for years I’ve planned to eventually replace my 2014 Toyota Camry gas sedan with a fully electric car…if an electric car is now practical for use in town, would a cordless electric mower be out of the question?

Consumer Reports and other parts of the internet assured me that improved batteries and designs have indeed allowed cordless electric lawnmowers to take on more than small urban patches of grass. But in the past I have had mixed results with electric lawncare equipment.

When I bought my house in Bartlesville, Dad gave me his vintage Craftsman electric edger. I used it once, creating sparks and noise, occasionally veering off from the curb to make narrow cuts in the lawn. I hated the experience, so rather than improve with practice I went out and bought a corded electric string trimmer.

That worked okay for me, with its swivel head that I could rotate from curb edging to fence clearing mode when the grass growing against the chain link fence in part of the backyard got too bad. But I quickly tired of running out 100′ of cord to stretch from an exterior outlet to the back corner of the chain link fence in my wedge-shaped yard; cul-de-sacs are nice, but they create weirdly shaped plots. So I bought a gas-powered string trimmer. But that meant I was back to mixing oil and gas, with a lot of noise, and while it was powerful, I was so clumsy that I burned my skin once on its hot exhaust.

So I went back to electric, purchasing a cordless 18-volt Black & Decker Grasshog. I loved how light and easy it was to use, but it had two big drawbacks. One was planning ahead to charge its batteries; I trim so rarely that the trickle charging from leaving the batteries plugged in all the time would be a mistake. The other was that it was too wimpy for some jobs. In 2013 I bought a 36-volt Black & Decker LST136 trimmer, which is plenty powerful. I like to use the 36-volt unit for edging and the 18-volt unit for fence trimming, but whenever I finally get the urge to use them, I have to remember to plug in their chargers and batteries hours or days in advance.

So I knew that an electric lawnmower would need even higher voltage (power = current times voltage). I am a paid electronic subscriber to Consumer Reports, and it rated the 56-volt Ego LM2135 as top of the heap for battery push mowers. I watched several video reviews about it, seeking out regular folks who had used one for months. It all looked okay, although I don’t need a self-propelled mower for my lawn, which only slopes off a bit at the back, and I mulch everything, so I wanted a Select Cut model with a second mulching blade. Thus I ordered the Ego LM2130.

It came ready to go right out of the box, except that I had to plug the 5.0 amp-hour battery into the accompanying rapid charger to top it off before cutting the grass. Since the Cub Cadet was still occupying the mower slot in the outdoor shed, I just tipped the electric mower on one set of wheels with its handle folded up and set it near a wall in the garage beside my sedan. If we didn’t have the nice outdoor shed that John & Betty Henderson purchased and assembled for Wendy and me as a wedding gift, I’d make regular use of that feature.

Yesterday I had my first mow with it. I had let the grass grow high while waiting for my new mower, so I knew that the battery probably wouldn’t have enough capacity to mow my entire lawn. It did a nice job, being significantly quieter and a bit easier to maneuver than my gas mowers. It never balked or overloaded, and I was able to mow about 2/3 of the entire lawn before the battery drained completely. Better still, I will never have to put gas or oil in it, although you are supposed to apply some light oil to a few springs and bearings once per season. The odds of that happening are not good.

I’m sufficiently pleased that I plan to get rid of both of my gas mowers, but I will need another battery since I don’t want to break up my weekly mowing into two sessions with a battery recharge in-between. EGO has 2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10 amp-hour batteries that will work with my mower, but you can’t find the 10 amp-hour one on Amazon. So this weekend I plan to purchase one in meatspace at an Ace Hardware in Broken Arrow, which was the only place that showed one in stock. That should give me plenty of capacity even for extended leaf mulching sessions.

I’m not much of a lawn boy, but I actually enjoyed mowing the lawn yesterday. Here’s hoping I’m not blinded with science!

Posted in home repair, nostalgia, technology | 1 Comment

Winter is ending, so let’s spring forward

Posted on March 20, 2022 by Granger Meador

March 14-18, 2022 | Photo Album

When there is nothing left to learn from the winter, move on to the spring!

―Mehmet Murat İldan

We welcomed the spring of 2022 after a winter that brought the Omicron variant. We endured new highs in local coronavirus cases, driven by many who refused to take even the simplest precautions. Wendy and I thankfully continued to avoid infection, with layers of protection from vaccinations, boosters, masking, air purifiers, and curtailed activities. That was despite direct exposure in an overloaded hospital emergency room and a COVID ward in Oklahoma City at the height of the Omicron wave. But precautions are not impervious, and this is the first of my blog posts that my father will never read.

Dad fell at my parents’ home early on New Year’s Day, fracturing his pelvis. He was hospitalized, and then Mom and I identified a nursing home for his recovery. He was boosted, had an air purifier in his room, and his caregivers wore masks. But the Omicron wave was too much, and Dad was hospitalized with COVID in late January just before his 97th birthday and a planned move into assisted living. In less than a week he was released from his second stay in a hospital, but on oxygen and in hospice. Dad found it more difficult to breathe in late February, but Mom was with him every day except when wintry roads were too dangerous, and he took great comfort in that. Dad died on March 4.

For over two years I have labored to protect my loved ones and the students and staff of our school district from COVID. It is emotionally wrenching that I could not adequately protect my father in 2022. But he had a full, happy, and honorable life. Our little family will cherish our yesterdays, dream our tomorrows, and live our todays.

I made 11 round trips between Bartlesville and Oklahoma City before Spring Break, and there are more to come as we prepare to help Mom move into independent living in Bartlesville. But after a cold and windy graveside service for Dad on March 10, Wendy and I headed into Spring Break. It always falls just before spring actually begins and is often chilly and cloudy. Sometimes winter snow reminds us of the misnomer. But we were grateful to enjoy several warm and sunny days in Arkansas, in an area of the Ozarks that my father loved.

Crystal Bridges

The threat of Omicron faded so rapidly that by Spring Break Wendy and I could safely forego masking for our first visit to Crystal Bridges in Bentonville since before the pandemic began. We had to park in a temporary lot since a building for the Whole Health Institute was being constructed on the former overflow lot. A six-story parking garage is also under construction and will open in the fall. The museum itself will expand by 50 percent in the coming years.

I led us along the Tulip Trail to enter the museum by the less-used south entrance. Wendy posed by the huge Holy Grail quartz cluster by the pond. When we made our way to the main entrance to get our tickets for the main temporary exhibition (which were free thanks to the NARM benefit from our membership at Woolaroc), I was startled to find a new dome transforming the sunken courtyard into a lobby with an improved front to the gift shop, which were welcome improvements.

Holy Grail at Crystal Bridges — Wendy at Crystal Bridges

We viewed the exhibition The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse. Wendy liked The Heavens Rain by Emma Amos, Zulu Boogie-Woogie by James Little, and The Burning Bush by Beauford Delaney. I wasn’t engaged by most of the exhibition but did find the video King of Arms by Rashaad Newsome to be striking.

Beaver Lake

We have stayed at Sugar Ridge Resort on Beaver Lake several times. This time, I opted for Lake Shore Cabins on Beaver Lake, which is 3.5 miles south of Sugar Ridge off Mundell Road. We were in Mountain Top Cabin #7 and could see the Sugar Ridge buildings in the distance across the lake. The decor was hokey, and I missed having a dishwasher, but the mountain top was peaceful with a great view of the lake below.

Before spending the first of four nights at the cabin, we drove 11 miles to Hart’s Family Center in Eureka Springs, where Wendy stocked up on groceries for our stay. During our stay, she cooked while I cleaned.

There was a so-called trail down the mountainside to a boat dock about 200 feet below our cabin. But we found it was treacherously steep with plenty of opportunities to slip on gravel. We opted to take a longer route back up using the roadway, which was still steep but not as daunting.

Lake Leatherwood

Wendy has long enjoyed searching for rocks with crystals along a stream that feeds into Lake Leatherwood at Eureka Springs. We parked at the upper level near the bike huts and made our way along the Foster, Beacham, and Fuller Trails to what I call Crystal Creek. There Wendy set off southwest along the creek bed, searching for crystalline rocks.

I proceeded along the Fuller Trail to the dam, intending to cross it and explore a trace on the east side of the lake that was shown to lead up to a knob just northeast of Pivot Rock Hollow.

Dam Walkway Closed — The deteriorating rails have led to the closure of the dam walkway at Lake Leatherwood

But I was stymied, finding the dam walkway fenced off. Deterioration of the dam’s railings led the city to shut down the walkway a year ago. The dam has long been neglected, so I won’t hold my breath for the city to fund repairs. But the deterioration at one of the largest hand-cut limestone dams in the nation was minor compared to what we would see the next day at the nearby Black Bass Lake.

I made my way down the dam’s spillway side to enjoy the cascading flow, but there is no easy path across the flow to the rest of the trails. I am not sure why the city doesn’t simply provide stepping stones to make it easy to ford there.

I didn’t feel like trying to ford the stream, so I returned along the Beacham Trail to await Wendy at the high end of Crystal Creek. She had found several nice specimens.

We returned to the car along the Beacham and Fuller Trails, stopping to photograph the seven-foot-high seated Sasquatch installation by Stephen Feilbach.

Sasquatch at Lake Leatherwood — Sasquatch by Stephen Feilbach

Black Bass Lake

The following day we drove to Black Bass Lake, which is just southwest of downtown Eureka Springs. It was constructed in Oil Spring Gulch in 1893-1894 after the town had burned four times between 1880 and 1892. The dam was hand-cut stonework and is now the oldest stone cut dam in Arkansas. Steam pumps moved water up to an iron standpipe at the top of the mountain. Hotels in the resort town paid $1/room/month for their water while private homes without a meter paid $4/year, or $7/year if they had a bathtub.

Fermenting vegetable matter made the water taste offensive, so the dam was raised from 20 feet to 28 feet in 1914-1915. It remained the town’s water supply until wells were drilled in the 1960s, and Eureka Springs switched to water from Beaver Lake around 1970.

The mortar in the 8-foot high dam expansion has failed, with much of the later fill washed away and major leaks developing by 2009. The city lowered the water level to what it was before the expansion, repaired and lowered the dam’s spillway, and had grout injected into the dam. The injection effort was a failure, but the lake was lowered to reach a concrete face below the spillway to stop much of the leaking.

However, the dam is still in danger of failing. That would wipe out the water lift station for half of the town, so the city has secured $300,000 in FEMA funds and will need to augment that with over $100,000 of its own funding to preserve the dam and save the lift station as well as the trails the city has constructed around the scenic lake.

Black Bass Lake Dam deterioration — The deteriorating dam at Black Bass Lake

I had driven us down the narrow gravel Oil Springs Road to the lake on a previous trip, but limited parking at the time led me to abandon that visit. This time we were early enough to be one of only three vehicles when we arrived, so we disembarked and started out on the Bluff Trail on the north side of the lake.

The trail ascended past the lower Sycamore Spring Trail to a fork with the Oil Spring Trail, which we will return to hike some day. We turned to follow the Bluff Trail along the St. Joe limestone outcropping that rims the valley.

Limestone bluffs at Black Bass Lake — St. Joe Limestone

Bluff Trail at Black Bass Lake — Bluff Trail

The trail was pretty even in winter, with nice views of the lake below and the large Standing Rock formation that juts out from the lake’s southern shore.

Standing Rock across Black Bass Lake — Standing Rock viewed from the Bluff Trail

I was surprised to see a tree that seemed to be holding in a branch its own broken top section that must have broken off and slid down in a storm.

At the far end of the lake, social trails led off the official park trails in the day use area. We ventured far enough to see Black Bass Pond, formed by an earthen dam upstream of the lake which failed some time back, with a large gash torn through it.

Failed dam for Black Bass Pond — Failed earthen dam at Black Bass Pond

Upstream along a northern feeder creek there were the remains of a rock wall, which I presume was once a small rock dam.

Side creek structure upstream from Black Bass Lake — Old dam upstream of the lake and pond?

We crossed West Leatherwood Creek via a new wooden bridge, and there was another new bridge across the dry creekbed of Hobo Hollow.

I saved the trail loop there for a future visit, pausing to take a shot from the far end of the lake toward the dam.

We then made our way back to the dam along the south side of the lake on Standing Rock Trail, which is a former pump road. A couple and their daughter were taking pictures at Standing Rock, so I offered to take a shot of the three of them together, and the daughter returned the favor by snapping a photo of Wendy and me there.

By the time we returned to the dam, the parking areas were filling up. The trails at Black Bass Lake were quite nice, and we look forward to exploring more of them on a future visit.

Spring Forward

We entered Daylight Saving Time just before our trip, and I composed this post on the first day of spring. Wendy and I had a wonderful time relaxing in the Ozarks at the end of a rough winter. Mom will be joining us in Bartlesville in a week to tour an independent living facility, and we look forward to her move to town, 33 years after I moved here from the metropolis. May this spring serve as a lovely reminder of how beautiful change can be.

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Escape to Quartz Mountain

Posted on December 26, 2021 by Granger Meador

December 21-24, 2021 | Photo Album

Knowing that the pandemic could throw us some curve balls, Wendy and I waited until the last minute to make any plans for our two-week winter break. The Omicron variant was poised to infect the majority of Oklahomans in the coming weeks, but its surge had not yet begun around here. Wendy and I were boosted in early October, so we had strong protection against hospitalization and maybe 40-50% protection against infection by Omicron. So we decided to travel the week before Christmas and after that hunker down in Bartlesville.

Early Christmas in OKC

I purchased some rapid tests, and Wendy and I both tested negative on December 18 and again on the 20th, clearing us to travel to Oklahoma City to see my folks. We both wore KN95/KF94 masks in the convenience stores we stopped at throughout our trip.

We exchanged presents with my parents in the city, enjoying Five Guys burgers I ordered for us using Doordash. Then Wendy and I headed southwest to our granite retreat.

Escape to Quartz Mountain

I was nine years old when Tia and Tony escaped to Witch Mountain in a Disney movie. I was forty-four when I first enjoyed the pre-Christmas solitude of Quartz Mountain, one of Oklahoma’s seven original state parks. A few years later, I took Wendy there in June 2013, and we returned there, at her request, after Thanksgiving in 2014.

The current lodge was built for $17 million in 2001, and the resort was taken over by the State Regents for Higher Education in 2002. It has been the home to a state summer arts institute since 1978, but its remote location means the lodge has long required subsidies to operate.

The regents lacked the funding to adequately maintain the underused property, so in 2020 they turned the property back over to the state, and it invested over $10 million in lodge renovations. This fall, Swadley’s opened one of its Foggy Bottom Kitchens there, so it seemed likely to be a good place to escape to at this stage of the coronavirus pandemic.

I went online to book a room, but the state’s tourism website lacks the details and photos a commercial resort would provide. There was only a tiny glimpse of one of the suites, but I could tell that by booking a suite instead of a standard room I could secure a full-size refrigerator, which would come in handy if the restaurant were closed or its fare lacked appeal. So I booked the Executive Hospitality Suite for three nights…and never got a confirmation.

So at a pit stop during our drive to OKC, I had called the lodge, confirmed they had no record of my online reservation, and rebooked the suite a second time. I wasn’t worried about availability, knowing from past experience how few stay there at Christmastime.

We took the H.E. Bailey turnpike from OKC to Lawton on a sunny afternoon with temperatures in the 60s. Southwest Oklahoma is yet again in severe drought, and we saw clouds of smoke along the turnpike from a grass or brush fire. So it was no surprise to later see the resort’s fire danger signs set at Extreme.

Smoky Sky — Smoky skies above the H.E. Bailey Turnpike from OKC to Lawton

We stopped at the United supermarket in Altus to get breakfast and sandwich supplies, knowing that our suite at the lodge would have a microwave and coffee maker in its little counter alcove but no stove or oven. Frankly, I would have booked a cabin at the park to get some cooking options besides an outdoor grill, but I found no indication that the cabins had been renovated plus they choose not to provide any pots, pans, plates, utensils, or cups. So we dared hope that the lodge restaurant and a few groceries would be sufficient, with a backup plan to make the 30-minute drive to Altus if we got desperate.

The Falcon Suite

We checked in after dark on the shortest day of the year, parking the minivan as directed at one end of a parking lot for the closest access to the suite. All of the rooms and suites are in a separate building from the lobby, restaurant, and meeting rooms. We schlepped our bags and groceries into what they bill online as the Executive Hospitality Suite, although its corridor signage calls it the Falcon Suite. It faced into the courtyard instead of looking out across the lake and had just a hideaway bed couch, coffee table, and a couple of platform seats in its spacious central room with the counter area at one side. There were a number of conference chairs stowed in closets on either side of the door; the central room has a fire occupancy limit of 58 and is suitable for events.

Falcon Suite at Quartz Mountain — The Falcon Suite, aka the Executive Hospitality Suite

At one side was a connected bedroom with a king-size bed with bathroom and shower, and on the opposite end was a connected bedroom with two queen-size beds and its own bathroom and shower. Each of the side rooms also had their own mini-refrigerators and microwaves, but we just used the full-size refrigerator and larger microwave in the central room.

The suite wasn’t homey, with bright lights in the central room that could not be dimmed, and one wall was clearly missing past artwork. So whenever we return we’ll book the cozier Scissortail Suite across the hall. That one faces the lake and includes a fireplace, a bar counter with stools, and at least one sitting chair along with the hideaway couch. We discovered that during the winter the Foggy Bottom Kitchen was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and offered no breakfast. But it would be open for lunch and dinner for the rest of our stay. So we made sandwiches and retired for the night.

Foggy Bottom

I associate Foggy Bottom with an area of Washington, DC where the State Department is located, having been there 37 years ago at a reception at one of the many nearby embassies. But it is also the name of six restaurants that Swadley’s operates at the Sequoyah, Roman Nose, Robbers Cave, Lake Murray, Beavers Bend, and Quartz Mountain resorts. My parents have enjoyed eating at Swadley’s Bar-B-Q in Bethany, and Wendy and I had eaten there with them once. So I figured the Foggy Bottom place might feature barbecue, but thankfully it had a more diverse menu.

We ate at the restaurant twice for lunch and twice for dinner. We had a different server each time, and everyone was friendly, and every dish was quite good. My lunches were the chicken fried steak and chicken tenders and my dinners were the ribeye and sweet tea glazed chicken. Sides included jalapeno sweet corn, green beans, and mashed potatoes and gravy. Wendy had their grilled chicken salad, chicken tenders, and spicy yardbird sandwich, which was a spicy fried chicken sandwich with spicy mayonnaise and hot honey drizzle. The portions were large, so we never had room for dessert. My ribeye was so large that I saved half of it for a yummy sandwich the next day. Wendy especially liked the crunchy apple fritters served before every meal.

So we highly recommend that you try Swadley’s Foggy Bottom Kitchen if you are at any of the lodges mentioned above.

Renovations

Some of the artwork that adorned the lodge in the prior decade was changed in the renovations and many furnishings were updated. I missed the decorations that used to adorn the Sundance Cafe’s walls and the western-themed corridor wall lighting fixtures, but those were minor quibbles. There were still nice chandeliers, statues, and wall decorations in the lodge. The Survivor sculpture by Ron Bertocchi, a memorial to the loss of the artwork in the original library when the old lodge burned in 1995, was still there. Wendy loved its huge quartz crystals.

A Hike on Quartz Mountain and a stroll around Twin Peaks

We enjoyed unusually warm and sunny weather on our hikes. The first day we hiked a couple of miles on the Sunrise Trail, making our way up to the top of the nearest hill on Quartz Mountain, then going down to the old Rock Creek Trail to connect with the Cave Trail and pop back out at the lodge.

The Sunrise Trail provides nice views of the lodge buildings with Twin Peaks in the background. Every time we have been there, Lake Altus/Lugert has been low, and this time was no exception. I know that the lake was full a few years back, so maybe someday we’ll see water closer to the lodge.

Lodge and Twin Peaks from Sunrise Trail summit — The lodge and Twin Peaks viewed from the Sunrise Trail

Across the distant lake waters we could see the other low peaks of Wichita granite dotting the eastern horizon.

While at the summit, Wendy spotted one of the large tankers from the air force base at Altus flying across our field of view above Twin Peaks. I had my Canon PowerShot SX700 HS camera with me, which has a 30x stabilized optical zoom. That allowed me to deduce it was probably one of the Boeing KC-46A Pegasus tankers.

Tanker above Twin Peaks — Tanker in the background above Twin Peaks

Notably, that was the only use I’ve made of that handheld digital camera since the pandemic began for us in March 2020. My iPhone 12 Pro has finally supplanted my carrying of a dedicated camera, thanks to its 2x telephoto lens and the convenience of its automatic syncing with the cloud with quick editing on my iPad. I have found that my iPhone 12 Pro often works just as well or better than my Canon EOS Rebel T6 digital SLR camera for work shots as well, and it is certainly far more convenient.

After dinner that day we took the easy paved Twin Peaks Trail that leads about a half-mile around the base of the one of the peaks. The skies were pretty to the west over Quartz Mountain and the lodge.

Sky over the lodge from Twin Peaks Trail

The trail ends at a boulder embedded in the concrete, and I still think it seems built for a sculpture to be placed there. But the trail end is unadorned, so we turned back to retrace our steps, with me shooting one of the large nearby boulders with an upslope tree backlit by the sky.

End of the Twin Peaks Trail — Near the end of the Twin Peaks Trail

Wendy had been delighted by a couple of deer near the trailhead, and was thrilled to spot nine deer foraging in the dry slough below the long pedestrian bridge that connects the Robert M. Kerr Performance Hall at Twin Peaks with the lodge. I still dream of someday visiting when the lake is full and there is actually water in that slough.

Deer at Twin Peaks Trailhead — Deer near the Twin Peaks Trailhead

Baldy Point

Our other hike of the trip was over on the opposite western side of Quartz Mountain at Baldy Point.

We drove over to park near the Wallace Mt. Ranch, where there is a scenic abandoned house.

Wallace Mt. Ranch Abandoned House — Wallace Mt. Ranch

Back in 2014, we avoided the Cedar Valley Trail there because the valley had been burned over in a fire. This time we took that short flat loop northeast of Baldy Point.

Cedar Valley and Mesquite Forest Trail Track

We noted how the blackened and singed trees remained, but the groundcover had reformed, including cacti, grasses, and the hardy lichen on the boulders.

Wendy spotted a bird’s nest in one tree, although it was not one of the eastern red cedars, which are actually junipers.

We then revisited the Mesquite Forest Trail that wraps around the southern base of Baldy Point. Side paths led to different climbing areas, with boulder piles that were invitingly cool after the warm and sunny walk out in the open.

Wendy amidst Baldy Point boulders — Wendy enjoys the cool air flowing from a boulder pile at the base of Baldy Point

One route up Baldy Point — Baldy Point looming above the mesquite and cedar trees

We reached the other parking area in this western section of the park and then retraced our steps back to the car to wrap up our 2.12 mile walk.

Home for Christmas

The day before our departure, we drove to Altus to pick up some hand lotion for Wendy, who was suffering from the arid conditions. I made sure to visit the Whataburger drive-through so Wendy could indulge in some of her favorite fast food, and we also picked up a couple of rapid COVID-19 tests. I had forgotten to pack some for our return journey, which would include a stop to chat with my parents in Oklahoma City on Christmas Eve. We had worn our KN95/KF94 masks at pit stops but had repeatedly eaten inside the park restaurant. Although it was spacious and had few customers, we might have been exposed, so caution was warranted.

We tested negative as we prepared to head back to Oklahoma City

We felt fine and tested negative, so we headed back with Trixie, my TomTom GPS app, directing us along state highway 44 past Lone Wolf and highway 9 to Hobart. State highway 183 from Hobart through New Cordell to Clinton had been repaved and surprisingly had a number of four-lane segments, making our trip north to interstate 40 quite relaxing. Then it was a speedy roll to OKC to revisit my folks.

The all-too-familiar trip along the Turner Turnpike was uneventful. I like the new eastbound stop between Chandler and Stroud, which is part of the scheme to close the Hoback Plaza near Stroud. The truck traffic on the turnpike has increased such that the state plans over the next decade to finally expand the rest of the Turner to three lanes in each direction, as has already been done from between Bristow and Kellyville onward to Tulsa.

We were back at home after dark on Christmas Eve, ready to relax with a couple of 1947 Christmas movies on Christmas Day. We are grateful that the state tourism department has re-invested in Quartz Mountain and Swadley’s provided such great meals during our stay. It was a perfect escape for us between the Delta and Omicron waves, but we plan to take it easy near home for the final week of our winter break since we know Omicron will begin spreading rapidly. The science is perfectly clear that vaccination, masking, and distancing are vital protections during the pandemic for those with the wisdom and resilience to follow through. Stay safe and live well!

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