Archives for September 2015

Another quiet night last night, and we had a light drizzle all day. Not much of a downpour, but just enough to eventually get a few inches in several buckets and barrels we had put out, just enough to get the horses through the day. I discovered the source of the creaking, one of the trailers on the RV had gone flat during the day! Not an old tire, either, but one we had bought just a few months ago! Hubby found the hole and fixed it while I once again ran down to the cafe to check my email again. About a mile from camp, I suddenly saw two bull elk, with pretty good racks on them, stopped right in the middle of the road! For some reason, I had grabbed my camera on the way out, and I pulled it out and recorded a video of them eating in the brush, where they had moved to after stopping on the road. Gorgeous! I watched them for a few minutes, they seemed quite unperturbed by my presence so close to them, evidently they'd grown used to gawkers in vehicles nearby. I eventually moved on, and was stopped again by another car blocking the road looking at another pair munching in a yard, a female and a yearling male, with one long fuzzy antler. I took a few pictures there as well, before slowing passing the other car so as not to disturb their viewing. Got down to the cafe, checked my email quickly, and was headed back home in no time. No elk sightings on the way back, however. Once again, settled down for a very quiet evening.

Woke up to the alarm around 7:00, had a quick breakfast and got everything packed up, and were out the driveway by just after nine. Stopped for gas twice, thinking we could pick up water at the Kwik-fill in Emporium, but they didn't have an outside spigot, so we had to wind our way into town to the Sheetz, which did have one. Once we filled up we headed out again, taking the longer route around the east side, because the shorter route from the north on Google Earth looked a bit hairy. Missed the entrance to the Gaswell horse camp because we were evidently coming in from the opposite direction most people come in (from Benezette), but we were able to turn around at the Dark Hollow horse camp just south of it, and headed back again. The information we had that there was a "spring" nearby was very misleading, turned out to be a creek a quarter mile away, that was so shallow it will be quite a challenge if we need to get actually get water. There's rain in the forecast, so hopefully we'll be able to collect enough not to have to resort to sump pumping out of this little creek. Anyway, Gaswell camp is a nice little clearing with only five sites, and none of them allows us to set up the satellite dish because the trees are so tall, so we'll be running down our recordings on the DVR this week (a good thing). Didn't take us long to get set up, put the horses out on their anchors for a bit while we got their high line up, which was above us in the woods, then settled down. There was actually a pipe hitching post up there already, but the thought of making the horses stand at a hitching post for a week was very unappealing. Very quiet here, no one else in this camp, and only a couple of sites at Dark Hollow had folks in them at the moment. Way out in the boondocks, almost no cell phone signal, not enough for internet, and probably not enough for a phone call. Going to be a week without much contact with the outside world!