Nebraska - Day 17 - Fort Robinson State Park

Fort Robinson State Park, Crawford

Monday, 17 October 2022

I finally gave up and got up at 2:30 this morning.  The carbon monoxide alarm went off 3 times during the night because Dext kept lying up against it in his sleep.  After the 3rd time, I just couldn't seem to get back to sleep for some reason and got up early.

But I didn't leave the campground until almost 10:00 because the weather forecast had been for freezing temps last night, and I was afraid of ice on the bridges, including the dam which I'd cross soon after leaving the campground.

today's route

As I was driving out of the campground, I casually looked at the gas gauge and realized I'd forgotten to stop for more gas yesterday.  From the look of the gauge, I'd be likely to run out somewhere along the road if I took the route Google and I had planned; the nearest place I could for sure find gas was 60 miles away on that route.  Instead, I decided to drive back to Valentine, less than 30 miles away.

And that was absolutely the right decision.  I hadn't gone very far before the little dashboard symbol that says "you'd better get gas immediately if you don't want to be walking to a gas station" lit up.  I figure I was coasting into the Valentine gas station on fumes - and I ended up pumping 47 gallons of gas in.

Driving into Valentine I noticed a strange cloud formation.

I kept an eye on it in case it wanted to turn into a tornado or something else serious, but eventually the whole sky clouded over, followed by no clouds at all and then sunshine later in the day.  False alarm.  But I do know Nebraska is in Tornado Alley, which is nothing to sneeze at.

At one point I happened to glance over to my right and saw 3 pronghorn (aka antelope) sitting in a field.  I know "sitting" isn't quite the right word, but they weren't standing and they weren't lying.  They were all upright but not on their feet.  Well, they were.

I was really sorry to miss the original route, which would have taken me right through the Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest, so I could've seen up close what Nebraska considers a forest.  But Google had said the original route would take 3 hours (meaning 5 hours for me), and it was 10:45 when I finished getting gasoline and I'd've had to spend another half hour just getting back to the starting point for the original route.

So I took the nonscenic route - US-20 - which I would have joined anyway 30 miles from Valentine.  US-20 has been designated the Bridges to Buttes Nebraska Byway.  I'm not sure what the "bridges" are, though I learned later today what the "buttes" are.  US-20 runs from Sioux City, IA, across northern Nebraska to Wyoming (actually, it runs from Boston to Newport, OR, but Sioux City is where Nebraska picks it up).

A couple of times I crossed the Minnechaduza Creek, and there's more substance to the name than to the creek.

I passed the turn for German Settlement Road - that's the name of the road, which I assume goes, or once went, to a German settlement.

We crossed into the Mountain Time Zone.  A meadowlark very nearly hit the RV.  I guess it was a Western Meadowlark, though their range overlaps with the Eastern Meadowlark in Nebraska and their pictures in the bird book tell me they'd have to sit really still before I could tell the difference between the 2 species.  I still think their song is among the sweetest in the bird world, and I was really worried until I saw that bird scoot out from the RV's path.

I passed through a lot of very small towns (e.g. Crookston, pop. 69; Kilgore, pop. 99; Nenzel, pop. 20) and we actually stopped at Cody, pop. 154, "A Town Too Tough To Die."  Dext needed a break so when I saw a sign pointing to the city park, I turned off the road.

It was a very nice park that was unfortunately mostly a playground - and I've been seeing signs coast to coast saying dogs should stay out of playgrounds - so we walked around the edges.  Which is how I stumbled on the city RV campground.

It seems every small town in the state has a city RV park, and Cody is no exception.  As with so many of these little campgrounds, they operate on the honor system and ask for $20/night with full hookups (the Broken Bow campground was like that too).  I didn't need a place to stay but I did need to dump my tanks; I hadn't been able to find a dump site back at Merritt Reservoir and was afraid maybe tonight's state park wouldn't have one either, so I used the sewer connections here and left them $5 (I took a discount since I didn't use their land, their electricity or their water).  It was a real relief to get that done.

We didn't even get into Cody until almost 11:30, so when we stopped here I fed us all lunch.  Bucky took that opportunity to crawl under the passenger seat, and when it was time to leave I had a lot of trouble fishing him out.  I'll be really glad when the kittens grow up and can't fit into these tiny inaccessible places any more.

I keep those towels by the door to dry off
my puppy or his paws.  I didn't realize
they might have another purpose.

Today I started seeing groups of evergreens clearly planted in 3 or 4 rows and fenced in.  These groups would run for a length of ⅛ to ¼ mile.  I saw there here and there, in various stages of growth, and couldn't figure out why they'd been planted.  The plots were too small to be Christmas tree farms, and they didn't seem to be located where someone would want a windbreak.  Maybe Nebraskans have decided they're short on forest and have started to grow their own?

We crossed Dry Creek, which had a noticeable amount of water in it, and I started to pick up South Dakota Public Radio.

We passed vast fields of dead sunflowers and corn.  Also cows, grain, some green crop, scrub and lots of tiny towns.  Also lots of hills, so the AC wouldn't function.  It doesn't work right (or at all) when the engine's under pressure, which it is on a hill of any degree of steepness at all.

The somewhat larger town of Gordon, pop. 1,803, has an annual Willow Tree Festival (named for an actual willow tree on the nearby Antelope Creek) and the Tri-State Old Time Cowboy Museum.  I'm assuming the 3 states are NE, SD and WY - and Gordon is less than 100 miles from their junction.

In Rushville, pop. 890, I saw a store with the following sign: "And all at once summer collapsed into fall. - O. Wilde"

And I saw a church with this sign: "Fall for Jesus - He Never Leaves."  Actually, I think I may have seen that same sign at a church back east a few years ago.  I've wondered sometimes if churches have a network where they pass around slogans to each other.

After Hay Springs, pop. 652, a sign told me I was on Crazy Horse Memorial Highway.  I guess it was so designated because tonight's destination, Fort Robinson, is where Lakota leader Crazy Horse surrendered in 1877.  If you're interested, here's the Wikipedia page.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Crazy-Horse

Then other signs told me to Watch For Wildlife Next 5 Miles - and Next 3 Miles.  The fact is that I haven't even seen more than a couple of rabbits since I've been in Nebraska.  It looks like it'd be good deer habitat, but I rarely even see a highway sign about them, let alone the deer themselves.  So if they're classifying "wildlife" as meaning the coyotes and raccoons and skunks I've been seeing dead along the roadway, then yeah, people should be watching out for them.  I just usually think of bigger mammals when I see these "wildlife" signs.

The town of Chadron is definitely the population center of this part of the state, with 5,851 residents.  I passed the Museum of the Fur Trade but wasn't tempted to stop because of feeling like I already know a whole lot more about the old fur trade than I ever wanted to know.  I did stop at the Safeway because of planning to stay at the state park for at least 2, maybe 3 nights.

We passed another part of the Nebraska National Forest, which is apparently intermittent in this state.

And it was soon after leaving Chadron that I started to see the "butte" part of that Bridges to Buttes Byway.  In fact, after so many miles of no relief higher than the sandhills, these buttes made a jaw-dropping impact.  They looked like a line of hills that were craggy and angular.  I couldn't get a photo of the ones I saw there, but there were more right by the campground, so I'll put in the photo of those here.

definitely not sandhills

Not far from the state park, I came to Crawford, pop. 1,107, "The Garden Beyond the Sandhills."  Crawford is home to the annual Peabody Hale Fiddle Contest.  Last year the top prize winner was an 85-year-old fiddler, proving that it's never too late.

By the way, you may have noticed how many of the nicknames of the towns in this area refer to the sandhills, which indicates to me what an influence the sandhills have on the lives of these folks.

Just past town I saw a sign saying "Bighorn Sheep Next 9 Miles" and another saying "Wildlife Crossing Next 8 Miles."  Now Bighorn Sheep do fall into my idea of "wildlife" and I was just sorry I didn't see any.

Fort Robinson State Park is a bunch of campgrounds grouped around the restored buildings of an 1874 military fort.  Of course the soldiers here used horses for transportation, so there are extensive quarters for horses as well as for the soldiers.  Crawford is only 4 miles away, and it looks like the town uses the facilities here for horse-related activities.  Even today, a Monday, there were several people out at the facilities with their horses, and I kept Dext at a distance from them when I could.  To be fair, the horses seem as interested in him as he is in them.

Online it had looked to me like this park was also walk-in only so I didn't make a reservation.  But I found when I checked into the state park office that the area I'd intended to stay in was closed, there was only one area open, and the sites there were reservable, though there were still some available for a few nights.

They assigned me to #1, and when I drove over there I discovered it was on a steep angle and completely impossible for me to use (and not very comfortable for anyone else either).  I went back, they gave me another, it turned out to also not be level, but it was much closer than the other and I was exhausted by then.  I'd already had the worry about the gasoline and the worry about finding a place to dump the tanks and the worry about that idiot kitty under the seat and now the worry about the campsite.  Meanwhile, Dext was being nice but I could tell he really needed to get out and relieve himself.  So I took it for 2 nights with the possibility of a third.

What I don't understand is, when folks are creating a campground on a sloped piece of land, and they level out each campsite so the sites aren't as sloped as the land, why can't they make them actually level?  I've been seeing this over and over recently.  It's as if they figure a half-assed effort is good enough for campers.  And as far as I'm concerned, Nebraska has absolutely no excuse because it's basically a flat state.

Dext is doing his best to make friends with the kitties.

And I'm still doling out medicine 3 times a day.  My, what fun we're having.

The day had turned nice and warm, so I left the outside door open and just used the screen door.  At one point I counted 12 flies on the screen and wondered if they were every fly in the campground.  It actually became a little ghastly, being besieged by flies.  And somehow, every now and then one of them would find its way into the cabin and it would make a serious nuisance of itself until I was able to kill it.  Yet another worry to add to the stack.

But on the brighter side, today I started watching the Star Wars trilogy (the original episodes, of course).  "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away . . ."