Magnus Goes North With Summer, Day 8

Tuesday June 3 

I went back early in the morning with Molly, the binoculars, and the camera.  And there, in almost the same spot as before, were the plovers!  They were fighting a little, but easy to get good pictures of.  This time I reported the other birds I saw and the walk so I could upload the checklist to ebirds as a “complete checklist” and include the picture, too.  It didn’t have  to be a complete checklist to include pictures, but I just wanted the additional verisimilitude.

 

And then it was on to Fort Ransom State Park in far eastern North Dakota. On the way out of the campground, a pheasant crossed the road in front of us. So I finally have my pheasant “life bird”. They’re common as mud out here, of course.

Fort Ransom is out in the middle of Nowhere, North Dakota. Google would have gotten us there easily, but the trucker app told Ed to keep going and so we ignored the road sign pointing to the park and went on past. Then the app kept telling him to turn on dirt roads, which was not necessary.  We managed a U-turn in an agricultural business of some sort. I hope it wasn’t private property, but we were in and out so fast I doubt if anyone would have cared.

 

 

It was a very nice state park, one of the nicest ones I’ve ever been in.  The campsites were nicely spaced and there were only a few people there at 4pm—the park staff and the campground host.  Later a couple of other campers arrived, but the place was still beautifully empty.

It was cool, 72 degrees, with a low of 48 expected. Starlink worked fine.

The park should be very highly rated. It had a huge playground. Hills and trails all over the place; grassy trails mowed neatly and it almost appeared to be edged.  The North Country Trail goes through the park, so maybe that gives them additional incentive to keep it nice.

 

 

Our site was fine, but if we ever come back we should get site 22, which is by the Sheyenne River, or else get the site in the middle of the loop that overlooks a huge grassy field.

30-amp electricity was all they had. There was a water fill at the entrance and at the beginning of the camping loop by the dump station.  The pressure was decent and we didn’t mind filling up.  Our site had a gravel surface with some sun; some shade.

Ticks loved the place especially well. We all picked up a couple, but of course Molly has her extremely expensive Bravecto Tick formula which kills them off her quickly. Us humans had to deal with them the old-fashioned way.

Way off down away from the campground, there was a huge “offleash dog park”. Which was basically a 3 or 4 acre field with a mowed walkway all around it.  Molly didn’t venture into the field, although if she’d seen a rabbit you know she would have.  But she enjoyed trotting along the path all by herself, and she came back when called.