Vinita to Picher

Cale from the Grand Lake area recently posted a dual sport route from Vinita to the ghost town of Picher. I mapped this on GPS and have uploaded the tracks. Sounds like a nice ride if you are in the area. Here are his notes from ADV Rider:

I’m Cale, Im from Grand Lake and ride a drz400sm and an 1190 Adventure. Ive been researching your OAT route and very interested in tackling some of it after this snow breaks. I would like to mention a route that may be of interest to a number of you. Instead of breaking off at Pryor and heading west, I would continue north on 69 to Vinita, at Vinita take hwy 2 north to 250 Rd (all dirt from here on). It will take you through some really beautiful farmland and cross the turnpike a couple of times. At Road 500, turn north. This road almost always has cattle being moved on it by horseback and the riders are super friendly as long as you don’t rev up and spook the herd, at the end of road 500 (crossing the highway) it looks like someones driveway to their barn but its not, stay on it and you’ll come to a wooden abandoned bridge that is a GREAT picture opportunity as you can see from my ride report there:
http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1015940

After crossing the bridge you’ll come into commerce, go north out of commerce and turn left at the Picher sign and you’re in the largest ghost town in the midwest. It will absolutely stun you. Explore a little, go through some of the old neighborhoods, hundreds of foundations and driveways but no homes. And the chat piles look like mountains. It will be a worthwhile addition to your ride, without a DOUBT. The marshals service is stationed there to prevent looting but since the tornado wiped out what was left of the homes, they don’t have much to do besides watch out for people trying to access the chat piles (stay off these, they are toxic, dangerous, stacked on top of empty caverns that collapse almost weekly and are Federally owned land -read: Felony for trespassing) but the town is open to exploring.

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