I looked at the park map and found although there are miles of trails, there aren’t many loop trails, and there aren’t any trails that start at the campground. So this morning I asked Bud if he would take Matey and me to the far end of Trail 4, so we could walk back from there. He obliged.
It was a well maintained trail through the woods.
Matey and I both enjoyed it.
The trail did have some steep parts, both uphill and downhill.
In many places the trail was covered with acorns. On a very steep downhill, despite my best effort, my foot rolled out on the acorns. I realize this was the perfect opportunity to yell “Oh nuts!”, but I did not. I sank silently to the ground thinking, “That knee doesn’t bend that far.” I was wrong. I sat on the ground waiting for the pain to pass and called to Matey to wait. Unlike Lassie he did not run to my aid; he stood there waiting for the walk to resume. After a moment I got carefully back to my feet and finding myself still operable we kept on.
After just under a mile we were back out on the park roads, but they were quite pretty, too.
Even cutting back through the campground was lovely. We got back to the camper in just under two miles. Despite the unintended deep knee bend it was a nice morning walk.
We’re a little bit further south along the Missouri at Indian Cave State Park, our only stop in Nebraska. We’re in rolling hills and hardwood forests, not what you might expect in Nebraska, but what I hoped for when I decided we should follow the Missouri River back on our return to Arkansas. I have not been disappointed.
And lately we have managed to stay on the edge of summer and fall, with daytime temperatures in the 70’s and overnight lows in the lower 50’s, and just a tinge of color to the leaves.
This morning I started out with a sweatshirt for a game of disc golf, but by the time we finished and drove down to the boat ramp I had shed the long sleeves. This boat ramp is parallel to the river and you enter with the current, which is strong.
We are miles below the last dam and this bold river truly rolls along through here.
This afternoon it is the perfect temperature to sit out in the shade at the campsite.
And at least now, on a Monday afternoon, it is blissfully quiet.
First, I want to mention our friends in Southwest Florida. It’s difficult to write of our peaceful good times knowing there are thousands with a category four hurricane bearing down on them. I only hope Ian does a minimum of harm. Stay safe, everyone. The only people who die in hurricanes are those who don’t get out. So if there’s an evacuation order for you, please go!
We are just south of Council Bluffs, Iowa, along the Missouri again, in Lake Manawa State Park. We are now below the dams on the river, but there still seems to be no commercial navigation here. We saw what might have been a barge loading apparatus, but it looked old and disused. It is a lovely river, still.
Lake Manawa lies just east of the river and was formed by a river flood in 1881. It’s a big enough lake to allow motor boating and water skiing and wake boarding. We even saw a sailboat with a small cabin on it yesterday.
The park around it is lovely and seems to be a popular place with people from Council Bluffs and Omaha, which is right across the river.
The campground is new, and although it is just a large, grassy field, the campsites are well spaced and the roads and sites are all cement and level.
And it has full hook-ups, so we are staying here a week.
There are miles of bike and walking paths.
Despite the background noise of an urban area, which we haven’t heard since Missoula, there is wildlife. We’ve seen turkeys and deer and a lot of fat, dark brown squirrels. Not a bad place to hang out for a week.
We’ve been staying in campgrounds without water or sewer, so I booked us for three or four days; we don’t have to worry about our waste-water tanks filling up in that time.
This was a three night stay at Big Sioux Recreation Area, outside Sioux Falls, SD.
Thursday, when we got there, we decided to try the disc golf course. It was an eighteen “hole” course through the woods and some open glades. It would have been nice, but the rough was so full of nettles it was unplayable. We only made it to hole five before we gave up.
On Friday it was cold and rainy, but we had errands to run. Matey finally got groomed and the clothes got washed.
Friday night the place filled up. I asked the campground hosts if there was something going on and they said there was nothing special, it was like this every weekend.
There were still plenty of uncrowded trails.
Like this lovely bike path.
The day use areas were mostly empty.
You would never know walking down this park road that there was a crowded campground in the trees to the right and a subdivision just past the trees on the left.
On Saturday we drove a couple of hours east to meet friends from Rochester, MN for a picnic. We had a great time in a beautiful park in Fairmont, MN. I was having such a nice time that I forgot to take any pictures!
Then today we left for our next campground. Matey and I hadn’t even finished exploring the trails. I would have really regretted leaving if the disc golf had been playable, so I’m kind of glad it was full of nettles.
We traveled due east from our last campground to get to another South Dakota State Park, Roy Lake State Park. We are gradually heading back to Arkansas, but I didn’t want to get too far south too soon. That turned out to be a good decision because we’re having temperatures from the fifties to the seventies and not much further south it’s supposed to be in the high nineties.
We are camped in the East Unit of the park; when we got here on Sunday there was one other trailer and someone staying in one of the two cabins they have here.
Today we are alone with 32 empty campsites!
There are big, beautiful hardwoods here. I had to get out my tree book to figure out our neighbors. They are mostly bur oaks with quite a few green ash and some American basswoods. There are big squirrels in abundance much to Matey’s delight.
And Matey and I have met two different small flocks of turkeys.
There is a disc golf course on the other side of the park.
And pretty Roy Lake forms a background to it all.
Oh this is nice and we are so lucky to be here, doing this.
We moved south and downstream along the Missouri River. We’re now in South Dakota along Lake Oahe. This lake, formed by the Oahe Dam near Pierre, is 230 miles long and over 200 feet deep, at its deepest. We’re about half way down it, not far south of the border with North Dakota.
It was not a long drive down, but there was a bit of drama. It actually rained yesterday (rain has been a rarity this whole trip as we’ve mostly been just east of the Rockies in the dry lands). The rain wasn’t an issue driving but the roads were wet. Just south of Bismarck our route had us turn east on 138A. As we started to make a left Bud said, “It’s gravel”. “Don’t turn,” said I, but it was too late, Bud was committed. The road wasn’t gravel, it was being rebuilt. There were two road graders tearing the top off the road. There was no place to turn around. After Bud squeezed by the first grader (they were coming towards us) the surface really got bad. It was loose and wet and muddy. “Are we sliding?”, I asked. Yes we were. And let me tell you that is a bad feeling when you’re towing a 35 foot trailer. Up ahead there was a second grader. “I don’t know how I’m going to get past him.” Not what you want to hear from your driver. But the grader pulled off to the side to let us pass, as did another construction truck. The surface was more firm past the second grader, and happily that part of the route was only three miles long. We were quite relieved to see pavement again.
And now we are here and the rain is gone.
It is lovely.
We can even sit out if there’s a breeze. There are flies here, too, but not as many.
We played disc golf this morning. Bud played regular golf this afternoon while Matey and I took a walk. This is from the high point of the Prairie Falcon trail.
Our campsite is out on the peninsula in the distance.
Even the walk through the campground was pleasant because we could cut through the trees as this place is also pretty empty. I like fall camping.
Soon after the dams were built on the Missouri River it became evident that the native fish populations were suffering. The native fish were used to a fairly warm muddy river. The dams created deep cold lakes separated by clear water, since the sediments dropped out to the bottom of the lakes. Fish that were used to migrating the length of the river could not. The hatchery was built to offset the loss. The hatchery uses the cold water of Sakakawea Lake, above the dam. Since it sits below the dam, all the water needed is gravity fed to the tanks, races and ponds, then flows into a wetland and from there through culverts and back into the river.
This is a quiet time of the year for the hatchery and although it was open for self-guided tours there was no one around.
The first room we entered was the tank room. There were rows and rows of bottles, where the fertilized fish eggs are hatched. Each quart jar can hold 60,000 northern pike eggs or 120,000 walleye eggs. The jars are connected by pipes to tanks where the fry will swim once they’re hatched.
From there the fry are stocked into outdoor ponds, now empty. The ponds are fertilized with alfalfa meal about two weeks before the fish are added. That promotes the growth of plankton, which feeds the fish. After about a month the fish are ready to stock in lakes in North Dakota and Wyoming. There are 64 ponds on the property. This hatchery produces about one million northern pike and ten million walleye fingerlings each year. It is the largest walleye production in the nation.
Not everything was empty. There were races with running water and fingerling fish that looked like muskellunge.
This race had these sturgeon, a pallid sturgeon and two shovelnose sturgeon.
There is a separate Sturgeon Building. The races you see here held thousands of rainbow trout.
The tanks had sturgeon. I believe these are pallid sturgeon. This is an endangered species, their normal migration to spawn has been interrupted by the dams. Every year wild adult pallid sturgeon are captured and spawn in the hatchery. The young are kept for a year and tagged before being released. Individuals can live 60 years. The hatchery has prevented the extinction of these fish.
There is also a Salmon Building. It is used for salmon and brown trout.
There were fish in both the raceways and the tanks, but I’m not sure what they were.
Two of the outdoor ponds had some water. We could see fish in the very shallow water of this pond. We don’t know what they were or why they were out there.
From the way they were jumping at this inlet pipe, they seemed like salmon.
We enjoyed looking around, but would have loved to have someone from the hatchery there to explain things. I guess that’s what we get for visiting in September.
This is another Army Corps of Engineers Campground and has the typical nicely paved, well spaced sites, just like the other Downstream Campground. But this campground has three loops with 101 sites and there are 16 campers here. That is really nice.
This campground also has walking trails and they start right next to our campsite.
They are well made gravel paths and they go through a woods; even though the trees are all cottonwoods, they are big broadleaf trees.
In the morning I saw the sun rise…
and the moon set.
There are beautiful views of the Missouri River. That is very nice.
There is a fish hatchery here, too, and we got to walk through it. (That’s the next post.) So all in all this is a better campground except…
there are flies. Hundreds of little houseflies that land on you whenever you are outside and come in the truck or the camper whenever you open a door.
They are so bad we asked the campground host how they dealt with them. He said they have never had flies like this before. They can’t eat outside and inside they hang flypaper. He told us the hardware store in nearby Garrison had the flypaper.
Happily we found a good disc golf course in Garrison because the hardware store was out of flypaper. Apparently the whole area is having a fly problem. They had this sticky six sided column that is supposed to attract flies with its colors and patterns. I’m not sure about that, if you look closely you can see 6 hapless flies stuck to it, but since in the two and a half days it’s been out Bud has probably swatted three times that many, I think these poor losers just landed on it by chance.
And now I have to go in because the wind dropped and I can’t take the flies anymore!
Life on the road has its share of challenges, but for us most days have gone smoothly. Yesterday was not one of those days.
The last time I had Matey groomed I looked ahead to where we’d be in six weeks so I could get an appointment and keep our poor dog from getting terribly shaggy between trims. This is where we were scheduled to be and there is a PetSMart in Bismarck. That’s 54 miles away, so not exactly convenient, but I figured we could combine the trip with other errands so I made the appointment.
We needed propane, we needed to do laundry, Bud needed a refill on one of his medications, we needed to replace the filter part of our water filter, we wanted a new vinyl map of states we had visited to stick on our camper (and now we had provinces, too) and we needed to replace some kitchen gadgets that were left behind in a drawer in our old trailer. So the plan was to visit an RV place, drop off Bud’s prescription at Walmart, drop off Matey for his grooming appointment, drop off me at the laundromat, then Bud would go back to Walmart and get his prescription filled do the shopping and then come back to the laundromat and finally pick Matey up all clean and clipped.
We probably got the wrong filter core and the RV place didn’t have a map that included Canada. We did fill the propane, which has to be carried upright and since we now have 30 pound cylinders has to ride in the backseat, seen above with part of the laundry.
The first Walmart we stopped at didn’t have Pharmacy marked on the outside and wasn’t listed on my map program as having a pharmacy. The one that did come up when you entered Walmart pharmacy was too far to get to before Matey’s appointment. So we went to drop Matey off first. That’s when things really went wrong.
I had found out Matey had a heart murmur at the vets in Spokane. The vet there said she couldn’t tell how severe it was, didn’t seem overly concerned and said when I got somewhere where I had some time I should get an ultrasound of his heart. If the murmur was bad enough they would not anesthetize him to clean his teeth. So in talking to the grooming department I said maybe I should have his teeth brushed since he may not be able to get them cleaned again. Well, alarm bells went off. It seems PetSmart has new rules (just this month) about dogs with heart murmurs. The salon called the office in Seattle to see how severe the murmur was. The office there listed it as 4 out of 6. They won’t groom a dog whose murmur is more severe than 3 out of 6, so no grooming for Matey.
That meant someone would have to stay in the truck with Matey while the other errands happened. We went to the Walmart that was listed as having a pharmacy and Bud went in. No pharmacy. North Dakota has a law that prohibits a pharmacy in the store.
So Bud did the other shopping, but I didn’t want Bud and Matey to have to wait the two hours it would take for the laundry so we came home.
We drove about a hundred and twenty miles for groceries and propane and came back with dirty laundry and a raggedy dog. What a bust.
We’re at an Army Corps of Engineers campground on the Missouri River back in Montana for one last stay. I thought I was setting us up for four days here, but I found out I was wrong and had to make this stay shorter.
I use an app called Campendium to plan our trip. It lets me see all the campgrounds in an area on a map. I search an area a reasonable distance from the last campground I’ve booked. I found what looked like a nice COE campground under 200 miles from Grasslands, Downstream Campground. Since it was a federal campground I went on Recreation.gov to make our reservation. I looked at the campground map, selected a site, and reserved it for four days.
The last thing I do is write the information in a notebook I keep. I also record the approximate drive time and mileage so we can plan the travel day. I put my reservation destination in the map program and it came up with a route that was 445 miles long and would take about 8 hours (without towing a trailer or stopping for gas). What?!?
It turns out I made the reservation for Downstream Campground below a dam on the Missouri in North Dakota and not Downstream Campgrounds below a dam on the Missouri in Montana. So I moved my reservation by a couple of days and added a new reservation for this campground, Downstream Campgrounds.
This campground is below the Fort Peck Dam.
The Fort Peck Dam is the largest hydraulically filled dam in the U.S. and is one of the largest earthen dams in the world. Most of the soil fill was dredged up from the river both upstream and downstream and pumped onto the dam. It was built as a Works Projects Administration project, started in in 1933. The dam was closed in 1937 and the reservoir started to fill. Then in 1938, just as the the dam was reaching its final height a whole section of the front slid out and into the new lake. Eight men died, six of their bodies were never found and are buried in the dam. An investigation decided the material was too slick for the steepness of the slope and the dam was widened. It is now 4900 feet wide at the base and just fifty feet wide at the crest. The last load of soil went on the dam in 1940.
The campground has nice walking trails, some around the ponds left by the dredging.
It also has a disc golf course that I liked a lot (I won).
And there is the beautiful lake with a marina on the upstream side of the dam.
But we only had one day to explore because tomorrow we are leaving Montana after 12 stops circling the state and returning twice. We will drive to my initial reservation, Downstream Campground below the Garrison Dam on the Missouri in North Dakota. I only hope it is as nice.
On the Roam Again 