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.