When planning our summer vacation, the kids wanted to see caves and swim. I wanted to see Great-Grandpa. Thus, we built a couple of hours in Okeene in to our trip. We stopped and at lunch, then brought him ice cream and listened to all his stories about the other places we were about to visit on our trip. It was awesome. Then we took the long way to Woodward through the Gloss Mountains State Park.
I want to be super clear that Gloss Mountain State Park does not contain an actual mountain. There are several large "plateaus" that are not nearly as tall as a mountain. The largest has a path up the side and we dutifully climbed it in the blazing sun.
A few parts of the path were climbing in the traditional sense, but most of the way up there is a perfectly nice stair case. It was a bit too much for E though so Brent (bless him) carried him most of the way up and down. Brent got a lot of exercise on vacation this year!
First look from the top!
So the "gloss" here is selenite --- yes, the same mineral that came up in our visit to Alabaster Caverns. We have a large piece as a souvenir of this trip purchased from the caverns store as it was a recurring theme.
We wandered around exploring the top of the plateau and very thankful for a bit of breeze.
We were only maybe an hour from Roman Nose or less, but the landscape is totally different. Much more like you would think of the southwest. There were very few trees, lots of parched red dirt, and native grasses.
Then, before we had a heat stroke, down we came.
Gloss Mountain State Park is a great short stop. I wouldn't plan a visit as a trip in and of itself, but I'm glad we stopped by and observed another aspect of Oklahoma's wild and varied landscape.
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