Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2013 – Travel to CCC Camp, Little MO Grasslands

Woke up early to the alarm, knowing that while the trip was relatively short, the errands and stops we had to make would make it a long day, and sure enough, it did. First stop, breakfast at Burger King, next stop, Runnings Farm and Fleet, third stop, Walmart, where I filled up the RV, the horse trailer and BOTH portable barrels, as the only water at the CCC camp at the Little MO Grasslands National Forest was a single hand pump and we planned on staying a week, so we would likely need it all, but I accidentally hooked up the water to the black water flush intake for a while, and by the time I noticed it, the black tank was practically full. Fortunately, at breakfast I noticed that the Cenex gas station next door had an RV dump, so on our way out of town, we stopped there, both to dump and to top off my fuel tank. Unfortunately, Hubby forgot to get gas for the generators, an oversight he didn’t notice until we arrived at the CCC camp, 15 miles from the nearest gas station. We still had enough for the night, though, and once we got settled in, we ran the generator long enough to charge the batteries just fine. The CCC camp is only about a mile off the main highway, 85, but far enough away you can’t hear a thing, but from where we parked (site 4), we can see the road as it crosses the Little Missouri River. Across the river is the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, where we plan to ride once or possibly twice while we’re here. The views all round us are quite spectacular. Two of the three loops allow horses. The containment strategy is pipe hitching posts parallel to one another, making it possible to create decent-sized corrals when you put a couple of strands of rope on each end. Loop A has hitching posts at most of the sites, while Loop C seemed to have them all in tandem at one end of the loop. None of the trees were really suitable for a highline, so we opted to put rope between a couple of the rails and create a corral, one for each horse. Meanwhile, they grazed contentedly on their anchors. Clio had been suffering from weight loss for a while (she still isn’t thrilled about the hay she’s being forced to eat when not on grass, though this last batch seems to be a bit more appealing to her), but now she’s started to fill out nicely, no doubt because of all the natural grazing she’s been doing. In the early evening, it started to rain, and we had a deluge that lasted for more than 4 hours. At one point, when we realized it wasn’t going away any time soon, we decided to put the rain sheets on the horses for the night, so we donned our ponchos (and me my Carlsbad Caverns miner’s hat with flashlight) and headed out, getting them all wrapped up in no time. We also put buckets along the awning and gutters to catch as much rain as possible, to supplement our already pretty abundant supply of water, just in case. Once we got back in and dried off, it wasn’t long before bed was calling!