Thursday, June 20, 2013 – Travel Day to Van Buren State Park


With just a three hour drive today, we slept in a little, but still managed to be on the road by 9:00. With stops at Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, Lowes, Bed Bath and Beyond, Walmart and Flying J for propane (with a guy who didn’t instill much confidence that he had a clue what he was doing, which is kind of scary when it comes to handling flammables like propane!), we arrived at Van Buren at just about 3:00. Just 1.5 miles off the freeway, it’s convenient, but will likely not be as quiet as we usually like, but since our destination are NEW states, i.e. Michigan, this is just a stopover on the way, and likely the last place we’ll have electric for a while. Only one water spigot at the entrance, but we found the perfect spot for us right across the road, a nice little alcove that provides us with some privacy. The rest of the loop is mostly open, with a mix of electric and non-electric sites, one site with corrals, but most of the rest with a high-line cable already installed (as was the case in our site), and some just with posts. Quite an impressive camp, except for the lack of water, which they really should have at every site, or at least several places around the circle, rather than just one spot. We needed almost all of our hoses to reach from there, but we filled up the RV, and then we decided to try out our new collapsible rain barrel. I had found one in a catalog, 74 gallons, to replace the old hard-sided one we’ve been hauling around with us since our trip out west in 2010, which worked well, but took up a lot of “hay space” in the back of the pickup, so when I saw this collapsible one, I jumped at it. We had bought a piece of board at Lowes to set it on, set it up on the picnic table in the hopes the gravity feed would be enough to work with the automatic waterer. It took one of the old (non-Pocket) hoses to do it, but we finally managed to make it work. We could have just drained it in, but we’ve taken to using the automatic waterer, even just for filling the bucket, because then we can do other things without worrying about spilling in the horses’ living area. I had put a quick connect adapter on it, so now we just slip it on, turn on the tap and walk away, coming back at our convenience and disconnecting it again when it’s full. A nice little system once all the working parts are in order! Eventually we’ll get it all right! Finally settled down for the evening, looking forward to the trails here, which look dry and easy and mostly flat, which will be a nice change for us all!

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