Campgrounds - Part I

The last two days, I've been working on photos from my trip west.  Now I can finally show people where I pitched my tent and what I saw.

Let's start with North Dakota and head west.  I'll leave the Wisconsin and Minnesota campgrounds out because it was raining in both places, so no good photos.

In North Dakota, I first stayed at Devil's Lake, a lake that keeps growing, swallowing up farmland at an astonishing rate.  I stayed at Graham's Island, which once was an isthmus entered by three separate roads.  Two of those roads have disappeared.  Now there's only this causeway:

The creeping water is threatening this road as well.  

When I camped here I wasn't even sure I would make my performance the next day.  Twice that month, the road had been closed off.  I loved the students that worked at the camp.  They come back year after year to take care of the hundreds of fishermen who love the lake...though local farmers do not.

I managed to escape the next day.

The next stop, Buffalo Gap National Grassland Campground, was my favorite, in fact I stayed there three days on my way west and two days on my way home.  With my senior access pass, I paid $3 a night, yet the campground had showers, good drinking water, and flush toilets.  The hiking trail adjoining the camp led through to a connecting trail through the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  I took this photo of the camp from that trail. In the middle of grassland, trees nestle around the Little Missouri, bringing shade to Buffalo Gap.  

It was here that I began to really enjoy my little tent.  Before this, I slept in the back of the station wagon because of the rain.   

The camp hosts were so good to me, telling me where to find groceries, telling me about things that were happening in Medora.  I met them at the free (donations accepted) dinner at the Medora Lutheran Church, one of the great bargains in that tourist town.

The wooded campground is a haven for birds, and that kept me busy with binoculars.  I began to feel the love my mother had for the wide open spaces, the prairie flowers, the big blue sky.  No wonder she felt claustrophobic in Wisconsin!