Monday, July 21, 2014

Yankton, South Dakota to Pick City, North Dakota



NOTICE:
You are responsible for your own safety.
Recreation use has inherent risk and you may
encounter a variety of unexpected and/or
dangerous conditions which may lead to serious
injury or death. It is your responsibility
to be informed and take precautions.

(From the back side of a Mississippi SP campground stub 
we just found buried in the camper. We had NO idea 
we were in such danger!)

Since our last post about the trip down the Missouri, we've moved a number of times, through some spectacular and new country for us. We left Yankton, SD the day after the river trip on Thursday, June 12 and drove to Ft. Pierre, across the Missouri River from the state capitol, Pierre. We stayed there until Sunday the 15th, having to do another repack and run from a large and long line of storms coming from the southwest, in the middle of the day on Friday. 

The radar was sporting dark purples & the heaviest concentration of them was coming straight for the campground. Unfortunately, we couldn't run from this one, as it was far too long of an unbroken line to drive around either end. So, in the time we did have, we decided to go north on Rt 83, then west on Rts. 34 & 14, and just drive right into what was the least threatening area of storms, as best we could tell from radar. As we drove towards it, we could see really dark clouds, almost like a wall, coming closer and closer. After a few spats of rain, the road just disappeared in a howl of wind and rain, and it was time to pull over on the side of the highway, along with another car that had been behind us, and wait it out. Kath was behind me in the Tracker, as we had little warning this was coming, and didn't have time to hook the vehicles together before we ran for the hills. 

Afterward, talking about the experience, she said all she did was keep her eyes on the floor, as the car was rocking heavily, and the rain was blowing sideways, looking like snow swirling around in the air and on the road. I found myself, about halfway through the storm, with my foot mashed on the brake pedal even though the transmission was in park, like it was somehow going to keep the camper from being flipped over. A few of those gusts sure felt like that could happen! At the height of it, I was thinking to myself with all the roaring and rain pounding on the camper, that there could be a tornado nearby coming right at us, and we'd never know it. In all , it lasted about 15 minutes, and we moved on to a spot we could turn around and slowly followed the storm back to camp and re-setup. 

Nothing else of note happened there, (as it was mainly a utility stop to restock, repair and wait out the weekend. Both towns looked like they'd seen better days, and Pierre had a construction boom going on 3 miles east of the city, where large housing developments were going up centered around the usual Walmart Supercenter and a host of other big box retailers, most likely spelling the end of what was left of Pierre's already fading downtown.







Anti-smoking murals in Chamberlain, ND











On Sunday the 15th, we took the 1804 road to Indian Memorial R. A., on the Standing Rock reservation just west of Mobridge, SD. It was being run by the Sioux (of the reservation), who had been handed the running of the campground and marina concession by the ACOE. The 2 guys at the check-in booth gave us a pretty funny run down of the situation, saying yes, they run it and manage the money, but the ACOE is always looking over their shoulders and telling them what to do. I thought to myself, ““situation normal-telling the natives “here-you can have control of this, but you really can't””. It was a big campground, and some of it was cramped, cord-wood style sites, and some were big, roomy sites. There were also a number of natives living there full time, one lady across from us in a tent, that worked at their casino up the road, and most others in various types of campers.

We continued the quest for more kayaking, but the wind keeps defeating us! By late morning it's always at a stiff breeze that whips up whitecaps on the river. We did take a drive out into the reservation on back roads, and managed to NOT get lost-it was spectacular out there. They are pretty much into crop farming on the same scale that everyone outside the res does-big equipment, huge fields a thousand acres or more, cattle etc. You wouldn't know you were in a reservation. I hope for natures sake the oil companies don't discover frackable oil beds there, like they have here in North Dakota. More on that in the next post....


Sacagawea Monument


Sacagawea Monument


Sitting Bull Monument


Sitting Bull Monument


Camp

From there, we hit the 1804 road again on Wednesday the 18th, and crossed into North Dakota, headed for Bismarck and General Sibley Municipal Park for camping. This was another utility stop, this time for laundry and restocking, but we never got there. About 30 miles short, we passed an ACOE boat launch on the river, and Kath mentioned it looked like we had passed a campground before the launch, so we turned around and sure enough, it was a beautiful CG in a large, flat prairie, completely empty of campers. There was a big, oval road, that had about 12 campsites along each of the two straight sides, so we took the end site on the far side, away from the entrance. We were in actual prairie, covered in tall grass and studded with Scrub Oak and Russian Olive trees-it was beautiful! And because it was federal, with my “old age” pass, we paid $5 a night with power, as opposed to the $22 we were going to have to pay in town. 

It was early, so we decided to make it a work day, did the complete unpack, threw the laundry in the emptied-out car, and headed for Bismarck to deal with that and run errands. When we got back around 4, we saw another line of weather not far away, and a check of radar showed a line again coming from the southwest heading northeast. As we were close to the southern end, a run due east would keep us out of trouble. There was a gravel road 2 miles south of the CG that ran east to Hazelton, then a state highway that continued on to Napoleon, about 40 miles away. We packed everything BACK into the car, hooked it up and left, about 4:30. It was about 10 miles of good gravel road to Hazelton, but still slow enough driving that it was raining when we got there and onto pavement. We hoofed it along to Napoleon, and needed gas when we got to that town. There was considerable lightening going on when I got to the pump at the tiny general store, and I thought maybe they would make us wait 'till the storm was past before pumping the gas, but they were fine with it. 

Of course, just as I got started, the skies opened up and in 10 seconds I was looking like a drowned rat-and a bald one at that! Once that was done, we moved out of the way and kept watch the radar. After a bit, we saw that the CG was just getting showers and the back line & clear weather was already approaching it. BUT, in between us and there, our road had deep red to purple storms showing on both sides of it, and a healthy line of the same had popped up and was coming at Napoleon. Decision time-we went for it, and really had no problem getting back, until we saw what kind of shape we were in the next morning. The 10 miles of gravel, which was wet with some sloppy spots on the way back but not bad driving in spite of torrential rain coming down, was actually a loose slurry of gravely cement, that had covered, and gotten into, everywhere and everything. The Tracker, being dragged along behind, looked like it was made of mud, the tow hitch was packed with it, as were the electrical connections between it and the camper. 

So the next morning, I took the car to the boat ramp and just drove the it into the river, got out with a 5 gallon bucket and threw bucket load after bucket load of water over it, scrubbing the heavy stuff with a sponge to get it off, including the windows. We spent the rest of the day getting things repacked, cleaned up etc. and grumbling about the fact that some goon in a giant 5th wheel had come in to the empty campground with 30+ sites to pick from, and sets himself up right across from us-I was livid & even Kath, who usually rolls with the punches, was unhappy. Left the next day, Friday, instead of spending the weekend as we had planned.


From Indian Memorial to Hazelton RA



From Indian Memorial to Hazelton RA




From Indian Memorial to Hazelton RA




From Indian Memorial to Hazelton RA




Hazelton CG




Hazelton CG



Mr. Happy cooking chicken at Hazelton CG

Went into Bismarck, spent half the day running the errands we didn't get to 2 days before, and struck off for Wolf Creek R.A., up on Lake Sakakawea, via...you guessed it-1804 road. It is a spectacular ride, and, even if a little bumpy in spots, beats the interstate! Wolf Creek R.A. was also an ACOE run R.A., similar to Hazelton, $5 a night, and we we ended up with a single site on a point looking out at the lake and at a 6 mile wide island about a half mile offshore from us. The dam that creates Lake Sakakawea, Garrison Dam, is about 6 miles from there & we hoped to try & get a tour of it. We discovered that they only do tours on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, so that was Saturday afternoon for us. Fascinating-the scale of everything there is massive, yet every part of the operation is spotlessly clean, in spite of being built in the 1950's. It took them 7 years to complete, and puts out enough power to run 300,000 homes. The lake is also massive-178 miles long, and the main channel is over 170 feet deep. It impounds so much water, and has such an excess capacity, that they have only had to open the spillway once since it opened-just what runs through the power plant alone is enough to maintain the lake level.



Camp spot at Wolf Point RA



Camp spot at Wolf Point RA



All that driving just wears her out!

The next day, Sunday, we did a historical ride around the block, checking out some L & C sites. First, we backtracked down Rt. 83 to Washburn, to the L & C interpretive center and the reconstructed Fort Mandan. The center was an L & C museum, which would be a rehash of the many we'd already been to, so we passed on that & it's $7.50 admittance fee. Unfortunately, the fort was also part of it, so we probably should have paid it but didn't, settling for taking pics of the 12' tall metal statues of L & C at “council” with a Sioux chief, and another of the girls with a sculpture of Captain Lewis's dog, Seaman.






Ate lunch there and drove west on Rt. 200A to the Fort Clark Historic Site. This area had mowed pathways to many placards on open prairie, describing what was at each site-you had to use your imagination, as there were no remnants or reconstructions. Our last stop was the Knife River Indian Villages N.H.S. This was great! Very interesting museum on how these tribes lived, and a reconstructed earth lodge, fully set up as it would have been back then. It is similar to the lodges that L & C over-wintered in that first year with the Mandans.






Kind of looks like the inside of our camper right about now!


From the earth lodge, we followed a short trail through prairie & woods to the Knife River-beautiful country! After that, we found a back road that followed the river west into more farm country to Hazen, then north back to Rt 1806, and east back over Garrison dam and the CG. Great time!


We were there from Friday the 20th to Monday the 23rd, when we left for Theodore Roosevelt N.P's north unit, where we still are today, Sunday the 29th. We leave tomorrow for the south unit.