Oklahoma City

Little Sahara Dunes & the Glittering Gloss Mountains

A single high-energy day into the strange, sun-blasted country of northwest Oklahoma, where a river's ancient sand dumped 1,600 acres of rolling dunes and a range of flat-topped mesas glitters with embedded selenite crystals. The morning belongs to Little Sahara State Park outside Waynoka — a sea of open sand where you can rent an ATV and rip the ridgelines or simply hike barefoot to the top of a 75-foot dune. The afternoon shifts to the Gloss Mountains near Fairview, an out-of-place cluster of red-and-white gypsum-capped mesas whose slopes sparkle when the sun catches the selenite. The short, steep climb up Cathedral Mountain is one of the most rewarding half-mile scrambles in the state, delivering a panorama across the surrounding plains from a stair-stepped summit. It is a day of loose sand underfoot and crystal glitter in the rock — a slice of Oklahoma most Oklahomans have never seen.

Arcadia & the Mother Road — The Round Barn, POPS 66 & Lake Arcadia

A relaxed loop up the historic Mother Road, this day trip follows Route 66 northeast out of Oklahoma City to the tiny community of Arcadia, where two of the most photographed roadside landmarks in the state sit within a mile of each other. The gambrel-roofed Round Barn of 1898 — an improbable circle of bur oak that has become the unofficial symbol of Oklahoma's Route 66 — anchors the morning, followed by POPS 66, the aluminum-and-glass soda ranch fronted by a 66-foot illuminated soda bottle and stocked with more than 700 kinds of pop. The afternoon drifts to the wooded shore of Lake Arcadia for a lakeside stroll, then continues east to Chandler and its immersive Route 66 Interpretive Center, where you can recline on a vintage motor-court bed and watch the road roll by on screen. It is nostalgia at an easy pace, all within forty minutes of downtown.

Guthrie — Oklahoma's Victorian Territorial Capital

Just half an hour north of Oklahoma City lies a town that time nearly forgot, and Oklahoma is the richer for it. Guthrie sprang into existence in a single afternoon during the Land Run of April 22, 1889, growing from empty prairie to a city of 10,000 by nightfall, and it served as the capital of Oklahoma Territory and then the state until 1910, when the seat of government was spirited away to Oklahoma City overnight. The loss froze Guthrie in its Victorian prime, and the result is the largest contiguous urban National Historic Landmark district in the United States — some 2,000 buildings of red brick and native sandstone, largely untouched. This single-day journey walks the storied downtown, tours the immense Scottish Rite Temple, traces territorial history at the Oklahoma Territorial Museum, and takes in a performance space at the century-old Pollard Theatre, with a leisurely lunch on a genuine 1890s main street.