We awoke this morning to wind, again, yet and still! Now we know why they build such sturdy homes here, with most of them consisting of brick or stone of some sort. The winds were so strong today, that it curtailed our plans somewhat, but we did have a couple of interesting caches to tell you about. We took Hwy. 62 west and then north on Hwy. 183 to the Great Plains State Park. We discovered today that Hwy. 62, in a great stretch of the highway in this area, is named the Quanah Parker Trailway. As you recall, yesterday we posted a picture of Quanah Parker Lake. Quanah Parker was born in the foothills of the Wichita Mountains, was captured and raised as a Comanche. He became a fierce warrior and later Chief of the Comanches. He later became a great statesman for the state of Oklahoma and was highly respected in the area. I will post two pictures of the marker on Hwy. 62, or Quanah Parker Trailway and if you can pull it up, it has a wonderful story about his life. Another interesting fact that we didn't know, is that Hwy. 62 starts in El Paso, TX and runs cross country to Niagara Falls, NY.
This is the front side of the historic marker.
This is the back side of the marker.
Our first major stop was at the Great Plains State Park. We wanted to check out the campground here, in case we wanted to come back, but as beautiful as it was, they didn't have the type hook-ups that we prefer. It was a very nice setting and lots of room between the camp sites. We intended to do a 3 mile hike here that had caches on it, but the winds prevented us from doing that. The gentleman in the visitor center said it blows like this a lot. We saw whitecaps on the lake, and it prevented the fishermen in the campground, from going out with their boats. So, it was a nice place to see but not stay!
Our next geo-cache took us to the Gold Bells Mill and Mine, which was established in 1904 to process granite ore. Cyanide was used in extracting the gold from the granite ore. This was a sketch that I took a picture of at the site.
This is all that remains of the building, except for the cooling tower at the top. You can just see the tip of it here.
This is the hand made tower at the top of the mill foundation. It stands about 10 feet high, and the geo-cache was tucked in a crevice 'somewhere' in there. We had to follow a grassy trail up the hill and watch for rattlesnakes! The wind was blowing so hard there, that I was glad when Jim said he found it! You can see that this form of producing ore is more sophisticated than what we had shown you yesterday.
This is another marker in the area and it tells about the killing of women, children and elderly in a massacre by the Osage Indians on the Kiowas. In short, the men went buffalo hunting and some had a grievance against the Ute Indians, and the massacre happened while they were gone. Only two children were taken alive. Again, if you can pull it up and read the story, it is quite interesting. Sad, but it was the way it was with the Plains Indians.
We entered the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge from the west today and we are glad we did that. The terrain is not like the east at all. We had a cache that took us to this heart rock and we had to answer some questions to get our 'smiley' on it. Earthcaches deal a lot with geology and it is not my strong point! I'm still learning! I guess that is why we enjoy those type of caches, as we never stop learning. While driving eastward, we saw so many more bison on the west end of the refuge. We never did see any elk or turkeys. We may be doing some truck caching for a day or so, as we have done what we can do in the refuge. There are some hikes there with caches, but we won't do them in this wind.
For our last entry for today, I'll post the adorable house within the park that looks abandoned, but you can see it was made with the cobblestone rocks.
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