October 24, 2012

Sorry I took so long to get this out but I was having some technical difficulties, mostly operator error.

October 4, 2012

Thursday we woke up to a cool rainy morning so it was a good day for indoor activities.  Our first stop was the park office.  We had arrived in the evening after the office had closed and this park asks that you not use the night deposit box so we stopped and paid on the way out.  Then we headed for the local chamber for the usual information and learned about the local Prairie Indian and Pioneer Museum so we headed there and looked around for some time.  It was donated by a local Doctor who had a large collection of Indian artifacts.  He also built the building.  It was very interesting, mostly local history.

We went back home for lunch after exploring the area and looked through our information and found that Covington Custom Cycles was located here so we headed there in the afternoon.  It’s a small shop and most of the bikes were at a show elsewhere but I checked out those that were there and got a tee shirt.  The parts guy was chatty and shared some information about the bikes and gave me a DVD and several magazines.  I thought it was cool, Debbie waited in the car.

On the way home we drove around the rest of the park and found the east entrance.  Just outside the park there was a deer that had been hit by a car in the ditch and a vulture convention so we stopped for a while to watch.  They really don’t like to be watched so you can’t get too close.

Friday we visited Alabaster Cave SP about a half hour drive from our campground and did the cave tour.  Just inside the entrance there was a rat snake enjoying a bat breakfast right on the pathway.  I stepped over it but Debbie made the tour guide get a stick and move them out of the way.  I wonder how does a snake catch a bat?  The cave was fun and interesting.  After the tour we returned to the camper again for lunch and to pick up Darby then headed to Fort Supply only to find it closed for the day.

When we got back to Woodward I found a farm and home store and got a bag of corn.  Some of the other campers had been putting out corn for the deer so we wanted to get them to visit our end of the campground.  We spent quite a bit of time watching them enjoy our corn.

Saturday we made another drive to Fort Supply only to find them closed again.  We called ahead but only got a recording of their hours.  The site is now a minimum security prisons which may have something to do with the closing but you could see the jailbirds out in the yard. 

From Fort Supply we drove south to a windmill display in Shattuk.  The windmills were fun to look at but I found the homemade well drilling rigs fascinating.  One guy took a model A Ford truck and made his rig.  It appeared that he could drive it to the site then move the driveshaft from the running gear to his drilling set up which used two old transmissions and three differentials to operate everything.  He had a winch, homemade pump and drill.  He used the transmissions and brakes to control everything. The guy was a genius.

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On the way home we made one more pass by the dead deer only to find that someone hauled him away but the vultures were back, there was a dead coyote in the ditch on the other side of the road.  I really wanted to see how far they had gotten on the deer.

When we got back home after dinner we found a plumber working alongside our camper.  We were in a full hookup loop and evidently the sewer lines had backed up.  They worked until after dark so we could not enjoy the deer that evening but did spread a little more corn in the morning and got another show before folks started moving around much.

Sunday we spent the night in Manhattan, KS.  We visited this park a couple of years ago so we found a pull through site and didn’t unhook the Jeep.  Monday when we went to leave the black water would not dump!  After fiddling with it for a half an hour I figured out the valve was working.  We cleaned up and headed for home stopping at Mahoney to dump.  The jostling around loosened everything up so there was no Bob Monroe experience.  We got home about 2:30.

I assume this is our last trip of the year.  This is likely to be my last post until next year unless there is and interesting event on a motorcycle ride.

Mike