All packed up and departed at a good time, as we have a little farther to go today. Although I've had a strange feeling about going to Hyatt Lake, mostly because it took us further west, and we had recently changed our plans and decided to head straight for Nevada to get it done (it will make # 50 for horseback riding, and #48 for the horses!), and even suggested to Hubby that maybe we should skip it at head straight for Pepperdine in California, we decided it was too far and headed for Hyatt Lake anyway. Rather than taking a direct though backwoods route, we headed for Klamath Falls, as we had several stops to make. Thanks to GasBuddy.com, I found a place with cheap gas before we go to the city, then we went to a country store to pick up some horse feed and to get propane. It was kind of strange, you had to find a card for what you wanted, then take it to the cashier, then drive through a barn where they loaded you up. That's when the trouble started. They had a very strange parking lot, and when Hubby pulled out of the barn, there was someone blocking his exit to the left, so he turned right, thinking it would swing around back to the main road, but it didn't. It dead-ended, and on a single lane so narrow, he couldn't find anyplace to turn around. In truth, Hubby is not the best at backing and turning with a trailer, so he tried to turn around using a driveway, and then got close to some trees that he though would bend a bit, but then he apparently brushed up again a stiff branch that had been cut back and was hidden in the fir tree, and suddenly the branch popped through the window in the side door of the van. Not the passenger window, but the side door that opens into the side of the van. When he tried to get out, he evidently got caught again somehow, and broke the window of the other side door, so that both windows of both swing out side doors were shattered. Poor Billy leaped into Hubby's lap, and Marina was covered in glass when he finally made it back to the store. Meanwhile, I was getting propane, and was getting a bit annoyed because the guy filling my tanks started asking me about their certification (the tanks are only two years old!), and then, without asking, stuck a warning label on the side of one of my tanks! I told him it wasn't necessary, that I was fully aware that propane was flammable, but he said it wasn't for me, but for anyone else that might be near my RV! I guess it escaped him that we had a cover over the tanks anyway, so his silly label wouldn't be seen, and frankly, anyone who doesn't know that propane is hazardous shouldn't bring their stupidity anywhere near me or my RV. Anyway, I remarked that I would just take it off anyway, so he refrained from putting one on the second tank. Right around then, Hubby showed up and brought me around the van to show me the damage he had done. I OMG'd for a few minutes before facing the reality, then we pulled out of the way and spent a few minutes uncovering Marina from the glass (thank goodness she's too infirmed to move very much, or she might have hurt herself) and soon were on our way. Lots of fresh air in the van! After our final stop at Walmart, we headed east to Hyatt Lake, through some twisty roads, though not too bad, that were paved all the way to the entrance to the "horse camp," which turned out to be not much. We had stopped at the dump to fill up with fresh water for the RV, but the lake was so low from the years of drought the area has been suffering, that we couldn't get anywhere near it. None of the sites were even close to level, and the only place we could park with any hope of a satellite signal was almost to the old waterline, which put us a LONG way from the horse corrals, and all uphill. After struggling for a while trying to get the satellite set up, Hubby gave up, saying there were too many trees in the way. We decided to use water from the trailer for the horses, since we didn't really want to go all the way back to the dump with a rain barrel after this long hard day, though the ranger that came by said we could come by the administration building, but that was almost as far. During the evening, we discussed out options, because this place was just going to be too hard to live in, what with running back a couple miles for water, then having to lug it uphill, not have TV and so on, so we made the decision to head straight to Pepperdine in the Warner Mountain Wilderness on the California border with Nevada. Although that made it pretty much a complete waste of time coming here, at least we saw it, and gave ourselves the time we needed to regroup before heading off into the mountains.
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