Michael Janke

Or Nebraska, or Iowa…

After being thoroughly depressed by the story of the Sand Creek Massacre, we headed east-northeast through Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa. Along the way we hit a few wildlife refuges – Kerwin National Wildlife Refuge in Kansas, DeSoto NWR in Iowa, and the Touch the Sky Prairie unit of the Northern Tallgrass Prairie NWR in Minnesota; staying in state park campgrounds in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota.

We stayed off the Interstate highways most of the way. Kansas and Nebraska’s US and State highways are adequate, and much more scenic. After a dozen or more times across the prairie, I still find the scenery anything but boring. The transitions from Rocky Mountain foothills to dry ranching and farming & short grass prarie, to crop farming & Tallgrass prarie is always interesting.

The state park campgrounds were mostly OK. New Mexico is low cost, with condition reflecting cost. Oklahoma is low cost and in fair condition. Kansas made severe cuts in state spending years ago, which shows up in the condition of their parks. Clearly underfunded. Lower your expectations. Nebraska’s parks are above average, but with out-of-state fees at $14/car/day in addition to camping, priced above their value. One observation is that in many parks, the assumption is that if you have a camper or RV you will take an electric site. We found parks where the non-electric sites were tent-only, either by rule or because there was no usable driveway. That’s too bad – we’ll often prefer to take a non-electric ‘primitive’ site, but still want a half-ways level driveway/pad for the camper.

Tonight we’re at a small state park near Luverne, Minnesota (Blue Mounds State Park). It features a unique quartz outcropping that was used as a landmark by westward travelers, and which maintains one of the genetically pure bison herds. The park thinks this is a big deal. Apparently commercial bison carry varying amounts of cattle genes.

We’ll be home tomorrow. Clean the camper, mow the lawn, and start thinking about upgrades to the camper. I’ll likely have to redo the cargo door screen I made a few years ago – hopefully also redoing the add-on cabinet that I made when the camper was new. I’ll have to figure out a new way of mounting my microcontrollers, tweak the monitoring system, quiet down the water pump, etc.

I’ll also continue to spend a couple of days a week at the Jackson Street Roundhouse – the locomotive that I’ve been helping restore is getting a paint job. It still  needs a new or rebuilt air compressor, brushes and brush holders on one of the traction motors, & a bunch of other work. Then we’ll start using it and find out how much more work it needs. Probably lots. It’s an excuse to work hard and get dirty though – I like that.