Little Sahara State Park, Oklahoma - March 7th to 8th, 2023

We were rather unimpressed with Little Sahara State Park. The main attraction is the sand dunes, but you can only access the dunes with an ORV (Off-Road Vehicle). Even getting a small glimpse of the dunes is hard without an ORV.

Tuesday we drove from Black Mesa State Park to Little Sahara State Park, also in Oklahoma. Before we left, we dumped our cassette toilet and our gray tank, finally. Even though we could pull right up to the dump station in the Black Mesa campground, we still had to position Red Tail (our Winnebago EKKO) as close to the edge of the pavement as possible and line up our water compartment perfectly across from the dump station hole. Then our original sewer hose just barely reached. Is our hose shorter than it is supposed to be? This is ridiculous. We need to find a longer hose that we can store somewhere. Since we knew we were close to our vehicle weight limit, we waited to fill our fresh water until we arrived at Little Sahara.

On the way to Little Sahara, we stopped at a Walmart in Guymon to find another sewer hose. We purchased a 15 foot hose in Pueblo, but we can’t figure out how to store that long of a hose. We were hoping to find a ten foot hose, but the store in Guymon only carried a 20 foot hose. That won’t work, so we’ll have to try again somewhere else. While we were at Walmart, we bought another week’s worth of groceries, used the rest rooms and ate lunch in Red Tail in the parking lot. So the stop was not a waste of time.

The drive across the panhandle of Oklahoma was pretty straight and flat. The landscape changed from cholla and juniper trees to farm fields and pasture land. The highway was a little narrow. At one point, a semi-truck passed us going the opposite direction, and the wind created by the passing truck folded our side mirror in! Since we don’t have a rear view mirror, the driver side mirror is pretty essential to driving safely. So Keith pulled over to the side of the road, on the narrow shoulder, and pushed the side mirror back out. Boy, we wish we had power folding side mirrors. That would have been very useful and safer than stopping on the highway.

There are several sections of the campground at Little Sahara State Park. Several of them are at the southern entrance to the park, right next to the highway. Our reservation was in the Butter Cup Campground, which is at the north entrance to the park, a little ways off the highway. Cowboy Campground is also located there.

The campground is nice, but we were disappointed with the park itself. The park mainly consists of sand dunes. However, you can’t really see the sand dunes from any of the campgrounds. The park caters to ORV’s and people are not allowed to walk out onto the dunes. If you are driving or riding in an ORV, there is a ten dollar per day, per person fee to go out onto the dunes. Next to the Butter Cup Campground is a short path up to an observation deck. We’ll check that out on Wednesday.

After dinner, Keith worked on Red Tail a little. He mounted our E-ZPass toll transponder onto the windshield. We’ll need that when we reach Florida, if not before. The E-ZPass works on Florida toll roads in addition to various other states in the eastern part of the United States. We purchased it during Season Three: Making Maine by Fall, when we were traveling up and down the east coast. In addition, he remounted our i10 RV TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitoring System - paid link) display, using 3M Dual Lock strips (paid link) instead of the Command picture hanging strips. The Command strips were not holding and the display kept falling down. We’ll see if the Dual Lock product does a better job.

We also mounted our Verizon Jetpack (paid link) outside the right cubby. We had it laying on the top shelf inside the cubby, but it kept sliding out. We’ll probably pick up a better signal from it having it outside the cubby anyway.

In addition, Keith mounted some Command hooks (paid link) in the bathroom. Two of them are for our wash cloths and the third is for a cleaning cloth.

Since there wasn’t much to see and do in Little Sahara State Park, we tried to continue working on chores on Wednesday. Ann worked on taxes while Keith tried to work on Red Tail. He remounted the temperature sensor under the rig for the outside temperature and humidity. We were lazy and hadn’t remounted it since we changed the batteries in it. He tried to mount a stretch net on the front side of the dinette bench near the floor, to hold our shower flip flops and slippers, but the screws that came with the net were not long enough for the provided attachments. P-clamps would work better anyway, so we put those on our shopping list.

We walked up to the observation platform a couple of times to stretch our legs. The view from the platform was disappointing. It is too far from the dunes to see much of anything, with a line of trees in the way blocking the view. We’re not sure why they didn’t put the platform closer to the dunes. It’s location is on top of a small hill, which probably made it cheaper to build, but it could have been built much closer to the dunes, perhaps in the trees, and it wouldn’t need to be built much higher to get a better view of the dunes.

Probably because it was the shoulder season, there were not many ORV’s out on the dunes. We walked up to the platform just after sunset. The sky still had some nice color to it and a couple of ORV’s were out on the dunes with their lights on. However, we didn’t get to see them do much as they were leaving as we got there. However, the park did do a nice job of lighting the viewing platform and the paved path leading up to it. There are solar-powered LED lights embedded in the pavement of the walkway to give just enough light to show you the way in the dark.

Before dinner, we filled our fresh water tank for the first time since we left home. It was getting pretty low, less than 5%. We only filled it up to 55% to keep our weight down during our drives, since we know we are close to our GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating).

For dinner, Keith tried out the induction cook top (paid link). He made grilled cheese sandwiches while Ann made tomato soup on the propane stove. It will take us a little while to figure out how hot to set the induction cook top for different items. He cooked both sandwiches at the same time, but it was a little crowded in the Magma skillet of our new cookware (paid link). The sides of the skillet are also rather tall, so it was hard to flip the sandwiches.

We were thankful that we only had two nights reserved for Little Sahara State Park. Despite not being able to enjoy the park without an ORV, we made good use of our time there. As we explore our country, we were bound to find a place we didn’t like. Normally we can find at least something about an area that is fun, but not this time. We were ready to move on.

Check out our related video: Little Sahara State Park, Oklahoma

(Ann)