Friday, Oct. 24, 2014 – Drive Day to Dead Horse Ranch State Park

Topped off with fuel at a Safeway, grabbed some breakfast at Burger King, and hit I-40 eastbound. Originally had planned on going in the most direct route, but my GPS gave me an odd choice of going an extra 40 miles on freeway and saving 20 minutes of driving, or taking a long and squiggly route through the mountains. We opted for the long route, just to be kinder to the horses. We still managed to arrive at the State Park by about noon, and the line already had 4 or 5 vehicles in front of us! When we finally arrived at the office, we were told that the horse camp area, which doubled as a group area, had been reserved since I spoke to them, and the only thing left was an overflow parking lot with four corrals, though someone had already reserved part of it. No water there, of course, but since we had no choice, we took it. I had to do some persuading to make them not charge me for two complete vehicles (which would have made it $30 a night, ridiculous for a parking lot with no water!), but they agreed that since both vehicles were registered at the same household, they would only charge for one. Phew! We were directed to fill up with potable water at the day use area, which we did, then headed up the hill to the horse overflow area. Got the horses settled into 2 of the 4 corrals, then we parked the RV so as to take up the least amount of space so that our neighbors would have more than half the campground to themselves. Turned out to be a good idea, too, because when they showed up, it wasn’t just a small family, it was a HUGE family, with seven horses! The ranger came along and told us we had to put both our horses together in one corral (a tight fit, but they’ve had worse), and the family proceeded to fill up the other three stalls, plus put up another portable corral (well, not portable exactly, they brought pieces of fence and constructed a corral), and put the rest of their horses in there. Made this tiny area seem awful crowded! They then proceeded to spread out, with tents, RV’s, trucks, etc. until the whole area was taken over. They also asked if they could buy some toilet treatment from us for their holding tanks, which I gladly gave them (not going to take money for something like that!) Lots of kids and dogs, none of which were leashed (which amused me, as the first thing the ranger said to us, when Billy came out to greet her, was that dogs had to be leashed), so it’s not going to be a quiet weekend in any event. When I went down for horse water and to pay at the ranger station, I was told that we could move down to the regular horse camp on Sunday afternoon if we wanted, but that someone else had already reserved it for Wednesday, so we’d have to move out again then! To heck with it, we’ll just stay up there, so I paid through Wednesday and went back to camp. Got the horses watered and fed, then spent the afternoon listening to our neighbors’ radio before settling down for the evening.