Archives for August 2013

At last, an opportunity to ride! It promised to be an interesting day, too, beginning with a herd of cattle passing by, again in waves, right along the fenceline, just 10 yards or so from where the horses were grazing on their anchors. Our brilliant horses, having been there, done that with passing cows, simply ignored them! A week ago they were having fits! Smart horses, they can get used to anything! What I found most intriguing is the curiosity of the cows, many of them just came down to the fence and stopped, staring at us for a long time, until they looked like an audience waiting for the show to begin! How funny! Eventually, they mostly moved on, though, and after breakfast, Hubby and I got started saddling, and before long we were out on the trail, if you can call it that. Pretty much it’s open grassland, though there are a couple of tracks that start out as roads but quickly dwindle, and many paths of where cows had trampled their way around, but nothing definitive. Apollo wasn’t quite sure what was happening, he’s so used to following a trail he was a little confuses about where to go, and I wasn’t much help either, though we finally decided to follow the fence line south to see where it would take us. Eventually we came to a gate we had to pass through, and that led us out into more grasslands. We headed to a high point, and were rewarded with a fantastic view that just went on for miles! We were trying to get to a place called Young Man’s Mound, which had a variety of stories explaining how it was named, but discovered that the recreation area didn’t extend that far. Eventually we made our way to the western section of the park, where we met up with the herd of cattle wandering around. Except, when they saw us, they stopped wandering and started heading in our direction! We slowly circled around them, taking care not to get them going, but at one point it meant taking the horses straight through them, and so we did. They were brilliant again, not minding at all, and in fact, Apollo had an epiphany, realizing that these critters would actually move out of his way on his command! He flung his head around at this sudden realization, and his whole attitude changed, from crouching from potential danger to, “HA! Take that!” Later, when we were running up one side of a creek bed, part of the herd saw us coming and starting running next to us, which only got Apollo so excited he galloped along with them, feeling very proud of himself. Silly horse! Anyway, it was a wonderful ride, very different from most that we’ve taken. The sense of space here is enormous, and openness of not having a trail to follow was an awakening for all of us, and the freedom to just set off in almost any direction at any speed was refreshing. The only negative would be that it all looks pretty much the same from one section to the other, so it would definitely be a case of just spending time with your horse, rather than really “exploring” the countryside. After all, you can see practically the whole darn thing from any high spot! After a couple of hours, we were back at camp, delighted with our ride and our horses’ new appreciation for “running with the cows.” Settled in for another perfect evening, with day temps in the 70’s and night temps in the 50’s. Perfect!

Had a bunch of errands to run in Dickinson, but the first thing I decided to do was to backtrack the last 10-15 miles on the highway looking for our rubber Welcome mat, which had fallen off my truck, but Hubby neglected to mention it to me until we were at the campsite yesterday. I had found that mat in an old country hardware store, and it had taken me years to find it, and I was pretty upset when I realized it had gone missing. So rather than give up on it, I headed east 3 exits, which turned out to be about 22 miles, before exiting and turning around. Just as I was coming up the entrance ramp on the other side, I saw one of those DOT trucks running slowly along the shoulder, so I flagged them down to ask if they had seen the mat along the way, and much to my amazement, they said Yes, it was in the back of the truck! Stunned, I looked in back and sure enough, there it was, but it was in really bad shape. Obviously it had been run over numerous times by something much to big to not damage it, so as a result, it was pretty much unusable. Well, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about where it was or whether I had missed it on the way back! Once that was settled, I headed back west to Dickinson to start my REAL errands, beginning with picking up our new Dish receiver, which I had sent directly to the Customer Care Center, erroneously believing that would be the most convenient place to pick it up. Boy, was I wrong! Turns out Customer Care only happen only happens from 5:30 pm to 9:00 pm! Having arrived at 11:30 a.m., and not wanting to waste even MORE gas driving around I had very little choice but to hang out for the afternoon and wait until they opened. What the heck, I can kill an afternoon as well as anyone, starting with trying to find a new rubber mat! I went to Ace Hardware, they didn’t have one and couldn’t tell me where to find one. I went to practically every store in the Prairie Mall, no luck, asking each time if they knew anyplace to check, and they all said the same thing, Ace Hardware or Wal-mart. I’ve looked for these in Wal-marts before, and they never had anything even remotely like it, so I wasn’t holding out much hope (though that was my last planned stop before going back to UPS. At the last store in the mall, a boot store, a customer told me to try a place called Runnings, which turned out to be a big farm and fleet store, which I couldn’t believe no one else had suggested previously. So I went there, but they too, had no mats, and no suggestions. At last I headed to Wal-mart, but just as I was heading up their driveway, I saw a big sign just behind them saying “Mac’s-Not just another hardware store.” Not one to give up easily (just in case you hadn’t noticed), I headed back out the parking lot and up to Mac’s. Walked in using the same line I’d been using all along, “I’m looking for a heavy-duty rubber welcome mat, the kind where dirt can fall through,” and the cashier pointed and said, “Right down there on the end cap.” Just like that! And the stack was so high I had to struggle to get one out. They even had two different sizes! Amazing! Never say die!! Well, after telling the saga of my search and purchasing the mat, I headed back down to Walmart, did the rest of my shopping, headed down to a Chinese restaurant called Kings Buffet for dinner (which was a challenge unto itself, and my server didn’t understand hardly a work of English, and even her backup didn’t know what I meant by “dark beer”, though my surrendipitous order of a Fat Tire rewarded me with a nice amber lager, just what I wanted.) After packing up the leftovers for Hubby and killing enough time, I finally headed back down to UPS, which, although it was only 5:20, had already opened. I asked for the package, but they had considerable (and disconcerting) difficulty in locating it. After nearly 15 minutes, it finally showed up in the hands of one of the workers, and I was finally able to skedaddle out of there. One interesting note, Dickinson is definitely benefiting from the oil boom, new buildings going up everywhere, particularly of the hotel (long-stay in particular) and apartment variety, Help Wanted signs in almost every window in every store I went to. Finally got back to camp to a pretty worried Hubby, who had expected me quite a while ago, but I shared my story and my leftovers Chinese with him, and he was suitably soothed. Settled in for the evening, albeit later than usual, but after a reasonably productive, busy day.

Up early with the alarm, leaving this charming place for our next unknown, just east of Dickinson, ND, reputed to be a veritable boom town with all the new oil reserves recently discovered near there. Stops in all the usual places, before arriving at a reasonable hour. This place isn’t far off the freeway, but there’s still about 5 miles of dirt road to get here. Nevertheless, it was easy to find, and, surprisingly, we didn’t have our choice of spots. With only six campsite, widely spread out, we thought from our research on Google Earth that one of the end spots would be best, but the three farthest sites were all occupied with tents, so we had to settle for a site that was far from our first choice, but would do just fine. There are water spigots on just about every other site, so that was no problem, and though it wasn’t exactly level, the large loop made it possible to use the levelers with only minor adjustments. We found a place down below the site that was fine for a highline, though a bit of a challenge stretching across a gully. Anyway, we got settled in easily enough, another quiet place from the looks of it, even though we’re not far off the freeway, and we’re looking forward to a quiet stay here.

Spent the day working on the computer, as I have a decent cell phone signal here, and because I’ve gotten so far behind on so many things! The horses are having a blast here, because there’s no one else in the campground, and it’s completely fenced in, except for the cattle guard at the gate, so we’ve let them have the run of the place. Cows passed by on the road off and on for most of the day, giving the horses another close encounter, which I trust will pay off later, as I’m sure we’ll be coming across more cows (and maybe even bison) throughout the plains. Dogs, too, are having fun exploring everywhere. I spent the day working, and Hubby likewise did some chores. We ended the day packing up as much as we could before settling in for the evening.

After an even better night sleep last night, and a good breakfast this morning, we saddled up (I went back to my regular saddle, which took a few minutes to re-fit) and headed out the back gate (which appears to be the only way to exit the campground without trying to get over a cattle guard), then circled north to pick up the loop trail at the closest point to the campground. We headed west first, a little disappointed to see they had put some small pea gravel down on the entire trail (on top of lovely sand… go figure,) but later it actually helped us stay on track a bit, as it was often the only thing that clued us as to it being the right trail whenever we came to an intersection of other trails (which was often!) As long as we followed the gravel, we managed to stay on track. My Google-made trail was perfect for the first half of the loop, then got off quite a bit on the second half because of a wrong turn I made, but we just kept following the gravel, and the posts that popped up at opportune moments with HH on it, and that kept us on track. At one point we saw some cattle, and when they saw us, a few started heading down a road in the general direction of where we were headed. Now, although they have a lot of quarter horse in them, my horses haven’t really been around cattle that much, and Apollo started to get a bit excited when he saw them, and in particular when they headed for us. As they came down the road, we realized that we would have to cross that road directly in front of them in order to stay on the trail, and it became a test of timing. I didn’t want to hurry Apollo along (it’s never a good idea to teach a horse to run when it gets nervous), so I actually slowed him down to let him get a good look at them, except that meant they were getting closer to the spot where we would intersect with them. Fortunately, we made it to the crossing while the cows were still about 50-60 feet away, then Apollo started moving up the trail sideways so he could keep on eye on the critters behind him. Once they ignored him and passed us, he settled down again. Later on, we ran across a lost dogie near the trail, and he handled it with much more dignity, probably because there was only one, and it was small. As for the trail, other than the gravel, it was wonderful! Very surprising actually. We thought that because the terrain appeared to be mostly grassland that it would be a fairly boring ride, but the trail managed to weave itself through practically every copse of trees on the tract. Some were copses of oaks, others Aspens. In between we were able to trot and canter regularly, which my horse really got a kick out of, since we had been doing mostly walking while my niece was here. We didn’t get lost during out three hour ride because we followed the gravel, but there were obviously a lot of other trails out here without gravel, which would provide more interest for anyone staying longer than the few days we will be here. Nevertheless, it is a small tract, so the variety would be limited. Though water is a bit of a challenge, this is a very nice campground, and will definitely stay on our North Dakota list!

Slept a bit later today, feeling a bit more relaxed. Our horse neighbors left early this morning, though I barely heard them, so now that the horse camp was empty except us, and seeing that it’s fully enclosed with lots of grass, we let the horses off the highline, and didn’t even put them on the anchors. They galloped off in excitement at the prospect of grazing like real horses all day. Another lazy day, other than tracing out a path on Google Earth of what looked like the 8-mile loop, and downloading it onto my GPS so that we would at least have something to follow tomorrow, even if in only general terms. I remembered that I had an old Sonicview FTA receiver hidden in a cupboard with some movies still stored on the hard-drive, so I got that out and hooked it up and found quite a few good movies, all only a few years old (rather then decades old, which is all we have on DVD). Other than a little problem getting the sound to play through the speaker correctly (it had a hum), we enjoyed a good movie as we settled in for the evening.

After our busy last few weeks, we’re taking the day off, other than catching up on a few computer items, like finding where we can have the new Dish receiver sent. Walked over and visited with our horse camp neighbors to pick their brain about the trails here, and, as is often the case with locals who know an area really well, they weren’t too much help other than, “you can’t really get lost here.” Famous last words! Though I admit, it’s a fairly small tract of land, so they’re probably right, and from all I’ve read, somewhere around here there’s an 8-mile loop, but they couldn’t exactly tell me where it started or went, so I’ll just have to figure something out on Google Earth. Read much of the day, then watched an old DVD in the evening, still feeling tired, but slightly less achy than this morning. Another day off tomorrow should just about get us back in shape!

Set the alarm for a slightly later start, knowing the office wouldn’t likely be open until 9:00, grabbed a liquid breakfast and left right on time, having had to empty the rain barrel (so much water-and time-wasted here!) before getting the horses back in the trailer. Got to the office just after they opened, got a refund for the three days we won’t be here, then headed back to nearby Fergus Falls, where we did some shopping at the local Farm and Fleet (the Midwest Farmers version of a multi-department store that has everything except groceries for humans!) to pick up more horse feed as well as a few other things we needed, filled up with gas, made a quick sandwich in the RV (half of mine I dropped when someone startled me coming out of the RV door), then headed out to Hankinson Hills in North Dakota. We both sighed with relief when we crossed the Red River out of Minnesota, SO glad to be out of that very unfriendly state. It’s amazing, it only took half a week to drop like a stone on my list of favorite states, and after just a few hours on another day, down to the absolute bottom of my list, just slightly lower than Massachussetts, which had previously been my least favorite state. Following Google Maps Navigation on my phone, which thankfully had a signal all the way, and several miles on a gravel road, we arrived at the campground. Two loops, one livestock friendly, the other just for campers, we soon picked out a perfect site, nestled in the trees, with a good view for the satellite signal, perfect trees for highlining, lots of open space for grazing, just one other horse camper site taken, though no horses in their corral, so they were obviously out for a ride. Hubby checked the water supply, the hand pump in the horse area was a lever type, and in the regular campground there was a wheel-like pump we’d never seen before, you just crank it like an ice cream machine and water comes out of the hose pipe. Since it had a spigot, we chose to fill up the rain barrel that way, so after putting the horses on their anchors to graze, we took the rain barrel over in the horse trailer and cranked away! We tried to use a drill on it (which would have been really helpful!), but couldn’t get it to work, but the water came out pretty well, and is less than half an hour the barrel was full. I very carefully drove back to our site, without spilling hardly a drop, and proceeded to get settled in. Though Hubby got the satellite dish set up, something went wrong with the receiver, and the only support Dish could give us was to offer to send us a new receiver. Question is, to where? Good question, one I can’t answer at the moment, so I let it go. Over 200 hours of recorded movies and TV, gone. Disappointing, considering the unit is less than 6 months old, but sometimes going over rough roads is hard on electronics, and we haven’t done as good a job surrounding this one with cushioning like we had in our old RV, so I guess we share in the blame. I’ll do some research as to the nearest UPS distribution center, or at least along the way to our next destination, then decide what to do. Meanwhile, we pulled out an old stack of backup DVDs we keep just in case, watched most of a thriller, though I went out for awhile to watch the stars come out, and saw two shooting stars and a satellite pass by! Not the ISS (according to their website the timing wasn’t right), but definitely something, though oddly, rather than getting brighter as it went west, like the ISS usually does, it faded out. Not sure why, but I’m sure there’s a good explanation. Anyway, it’s very quiet here except for the occasional train whistle and vehicle coming down the road next to the campground, and the temps are dropping, so we’re looking forward to an excellent (and more relaxed!) night’s sleep!

Headed out early, stopping at the dump to do a good flush of the tanks, then headed west, by-passing the Twin Cities, only stopping for fuel, lunch at BK and again for Walmart before heading north the Maplewood. It was a fairly easy drive, so we managed to arrive around 3:00. Stopped at the office to get checked in, and then the trouble started again. At first, I was pleased that the woman there said she would assign us a spot, and if we didn’t like it we could simply call her and she’d move us over in the computer, saving me a trip back to the office (something the other camp wouldn’t let us do), but then she asked about vehicle passes, which I told her we had purchased at the last place. She said she couldn’t see it on my windshield and I told her it was laying on the dash in the right-hand corner where they wanted it, and that I could bring it in and show it to her, but she said, no, it had to be stuck on the windshield. I looked at her amusedly, then went out, took off half of the backing and stuck it on the windshield (I wanted to be able to get it off as soon as possible, and sticking only half on would make that possible,) and walked back inside. She said, no, it had to be fully stuck on the windshield. I explained that we were on our way out of the state, and that I wanted to be able to take the sticker off easily, and she said if I didn’t stick it fully on the windshield she’d have to charge me for another vehicle pass! It’s amazing, as soon as you present certain government workers with logic and reason that disagrees with their rules, they immediately resort to bullying and intimidation with threats of fines. That seems to be the entrenched mindset here in Minnesota, and frankly, I’d had enough! Unfortunately, it was too late in the day to find an alternative, so I went back out, finished sticking the sticker to my windshield, paid my $80 for four nights, and was about to leave when she asked me if we had our Horse Passes. I told her I thought that was covered in the camping fee, as the last place hadn’t asked us that, and she said, no, it was a separate fee, $5 per person per day, or $30 per person for an annual pass! I told her I didn’t know if we were even going to be riding, and she told me to come back and get one before we rode. I was seething again by the time I got back into my truck. I radioed Hubby and told him what happened, and we made our way to the campground, which was rounded hills throughout, with hardly a level spot to be found. While he went looking for a spot, I started to fill up the RV fresh water tank from the one and only spigot in the camp, about 20 yards off the road, but with no pullout, so I was essentially blocking the road the whole time. A couple of women day riders came by and we had an informative chat about the trails, and the park, and some other parks. They were formerly from southern Illinois, so we had some camps in common (Garden of the Gods), but they also expressed frustration about needing Horse Passes just to ride the trails. I asked them to stop by on their way back, to talk more about what was in the Dakotas, and they agreed before heading on their way. Hubby finally found a spot that would suit him for a satellite signal and radioed to tell me where. I finished filling the RV and turned to filling the portable rain barrel, which I only had room to put on the tailgate of the truck since we had such a full load of hay. I tied a rope around it to keep it from moving, which would have worked fine if the roads and/or sites had been level. After spending nearly an hour filling up, I finally headed down to the site Hubby had chosen, which was tucked away mostly in woods, though clear to the southwest for his satellite. Unfortunately, it was a reverse uphill climb for me, and halfway up, my rain barrel lost it’s balance and tipped over, ripping a seam along the top zipper in the process, and completing emptying out, darn it! It’s amazing, once we are confronted with negativity, it just seems to compound itself, and more things always seem to go wrong! Anyway, we finally got the RV settled in, then I had to take the rain barrel in the back of the horse trailer (they were on their anchors by now, grazing), and went back to the spigot and spend another 20 minutes filling that up again. By the time I got back it was after five, and Hubby had decided not to bother with the satellite dish tonight as it was so late. We both commiserated on yet another bad Minnesota/State Park experience, and after some discussion and research, decided that $20/night was WAY too much for a spot that wasn’t level, water that wasn’t accessible, no electricity (which for $20 a night most places would have), plus the requirement to spend yet ANOTHER $10 just to ride the trails, or risk being caught without a pass and being cited for that. Oh, I forgot to mention that just after we arrived at the campground, a ranger showed up, ostensibly to help us choose a site, but it quickly became obvious he just wanted to make sure we had stopped at the office and paid all our fees. Anyway, we decided we would both be miserable under these circumstances (the only thing this place had going for it was at least it had highlines rather than hitching rails), so we determined that we would move again tomorrow, this time to Hankinson Hills Campground in a small section of the Sheyenne National Forest about 80 miles from here. It’s only $6 a night, with 50% off for Hubby’s Golden Age Passport bringing that down to $3 a night, it has two water outlets, albeit hand-pumps, but since the RV was full anyway, all we’d need it for is the horses. I haven’t been able to find a trail map, but apparently there’s at least an 8-mile loop around the park, and it’s small enough where it doesn’t look like we could get lost, and the Google Earth shot makes it seem like there are a number of other trails that crisscross the main trail, so it should be interesting for a few days. Plus it was a bit out in the boonies the way we like it (and NOT a State Park!) so the rules and enforcement will likely be much more relaxed. Anyway, with that decision made, and after a short visit with the ladies who kept their word and stopped by for a while, we settled down to a movie on PVR, and went to bed early, tired from all of our recent ordeals.