Another night of almost overwhelming thunder and lightning, the kind of lightning that lights up the interior of Pearl while the thunder rocks us from side to side.
Then heavy rain all night. I woke up to see just how dirty the rain and dust combined made everything. 
This window reminds me that Pearl and Durga need a bath.
I made myself a cup of coffee then high tailed it out of Fort Supply while everyone else was still sleeping.
The Oklahoma Panhandle goes on for a long time. It’s nothing like the soft, green rolling hills I’d traveled through for two days. Here’s where life becomes flat.
Flat, vast open spaces where I discovered numerous signs announcing “energy leases”. 
About every 20-50 miles one of these little signs
(sign will not reproduce for some reason. hmmm)appears in the middle of all that country, letting us know that this person is making big bucks off of natural gas, oil, or wind energy (yes, I did see a few places where that is happening) leases.
Our public land, their private dollars.
Route 64 gets very little traffic. I drove for long stretches, sometimes an hour or more, without seeing another car.
A few truckers make their way hauling goods but most of them take the interstate these days.
Hard living out there.
Towns on the map no longer exist as towns. Ming, Gage, Fargo, May, Elmwood—just places where people once lived and eked out a life. No more commerce, shuttered buildings, most falling down.
It makes me sad to see so many disappearing small towns.
Guymon, however, is thriving. 
This Texas County seat (so close to Texas, the state), is home to arts festivals, rodeos, casinos, and massive hunting preserves.
It also has a problem with nitrate in its drinking water. Though I didn’t know this when I stopped for breakfast and asked for a big glass of water with lime.
There was exactly one breakfast place that wasn’t McDonalds, Sonic, or the Oklahoma chain, Braums, which is known more for its ice cream but serves fast food, too, according to someone I asked at the filling station.
I discovered Jack’s Bar and Grill.
The little place was hopping on a Saturday morning. Lots of cowboys and locals having a meal.
My Panhandle Scramble (eggs, chiles, cheese, potatoes, pico de gallo) was pretty tasty with a portion so huge so I’ll enjoy it again tomorrow.
I loved their bathroom with these two fluorescent lights built into the tile wall .
I’m thinking Jack may be a woman. Yee haw!
Back on the road with another long drive through wide open range.
I had time to think a lot about those cattle drives we always see in movies, but the fact is, this terrain looks like it would be hard to ride a herd through.
In Lonesome Dove, the drive through Oklahoma to Texas is one of the more realistic cattle drives I’ve seen. Good film if you haven’t seen it.
This cowboy is the real thing, not from the movie, but from the same era the film represents.
A while longer through unrelieved flatness, I came upon this place. It called to me so much I stopped to take its picture. 
Someone’s beloved homestead, another victim of the dust bowl.
Speaking of the dust bowl, my next stop was Boise (pronounced boys) City for gas.
Boise City, population 1100, is famous for two things: one, being mistakenly bombed in 1943 by a US bombing team during World War Two, who saw the lights of the town and mistook it for their practice target.
That little accident resulted in the city getting enough money in damages to build this lovely courthouse and town square. 
Interestingly, the bombers were invited back to celebrate the 50th anniversary but all declined, citing “health reasons” as well as a desire to not attract further attention to their error.
And two: Boise City became ground zero for the dust bowl of the 1930’s.
The town originally attracted many farmers, victims of a massive land swindle perpetrated by J.E. Stanley and A. J. Kline, who created flyers advertising an Artesian well (there isn’t one), tree lined and paved streets (none existed), and touting the rich farmland fed by the Beaver River (dried up for years).
3000 farm lots were sold making the swindlers over $75,000, a fortune in those days.
Desperate landowners, eager to make something from the land they’d purchased, ripped out 32 million acres of thriving prairie grass, attempted to dig wells, replace it all with crops.
Without sufficient water, the crops failed, without sufficient prairie grass cover, the soil turned to dust. Dust storms that lasted nearly a decade.
“Okies” fled the state, desperate to find work elsewhere.
Against all odds, however, Boise City seems to be hanging on.
A small, tidy town with a Dairy Queen, a gas station, and a 3 ½ acre heritage museum, the Cimarron Heritage Center, which boasts hands on activities, an 1800 pound Apatosaurus statue 
“Cimmy the Dino”
a Santa Fe Trail exhibit, and a replica of a dust bowl house for those with a morbid curiosity.
I wanted to visit the museum but sadly, it was closed for Holy Week.
In any case, here’s to Boise City. May it continue to beat the odds and thrive.
However, the highway out of Boise City was dreadful.
I have not driven on such a bad highway in the United States before.
For over 40 miles I could go no faster than 20 mph. The surface was cracked, wash boarded, pot holes appeared without warning, the roadside sometimes crumbled into the ditches which line it.
Perhaps that road surface explains why there were only two other vehicles on it.
Once I crossed into New Mexico, Route 64 improved.
And here I am, at last, at Clayton Lake Campground, 
famous for the dinosaur tracks discovered in 1982 when the lake overflowed its spillway 
(the lake today)
uncovering tracks preserved on the other side.
Like many of you, I was a dinosaur nut as a kid. Second only to my horse obsession, I devoured everything I could read about dinosaurs.
When I began planning this pilgrimage, I discovered if I came through the Oklahoma Panhandle following route 64, I would come through Clayton, New Mexico, the site of the largest known collection of dinosaur tracks in one place. Naturally, I had to see them.
Once I parked Durga and settled Pearl, I hiked up the trail, crossed the spillway 
made my way down the boardwalk 
to see for myself.
Over 500 tracks from four different types of dinosaurs, both plant and meat eaters, can be seen.
While I’m not an expert and can’t make out the difference, it is pretty amazing to see all these tracks, 
some of which are preserved tail drags. A rare find, apparently.
This one is a vegetarian, three toes give it away.
It was pretty great seeing where these ancient creatures stepped in the mud on their various paths toward extinction.
In closing, it has turned cold today!
44 degrees with the temperature dropping overnight.
It appears I’ve left the southern heat wave behind.
Tomorrow, Palo Flechado Pass, 9109 feet, en route to El Prado.
Turns out that dinosaur tracks are the Massachusetts state fossil! There’s a small park (Dinosaur Footprints in Holyoke) not too far from where I live that purports to be the place where dinosaur prints were first scientifically described in the early 1800s. Apparently, the Connecticut River Valley is full of them, and some were found (in earlier days before the dam was built) in my town as well. I’ve never visited that park, but I have seen some of the fossils at a local natural history museum. Now I’m curious to see them in person.
yeah!