When else was I going to get anything like a genuine "Great Plains" experience?. Planning to visit my son in Boulder I spent weeks pouring over maps and aerial photos trying to decide where we should go look for arrowheads.
Found the perfect spot: next to a major creek (Howard Creek), on public land (Pawnee Grasslands National Park), and signs of past plowing - with long straight lines from industrial scale plowing overlaid on curved lines from manual plowing. So the ground will have been churned. I zoomed in on a destination (up CR77 from Briggsdale, between CR96 and CR100 - figured we could pretend to be bird watching, if deception was called for) and, to my delight, spotted a marking on the map: "Arrowhead Windmill". Seemed just right.
Drove out that way (~100 miles from Boulder), getting to chat with my son, we finally arrived and stepped out. The ground was covered with chips:
Mostly chalcedony (a form of SiO2, different from quartz in its flaking properties) and jasper. We did not find arrowheads but scrapers and worked edges.Top to bottom: a scraper made of jasper (metamorphosed chert); a chalcedony working edge; a bit of a 'hatchet' made of chert [??].
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