Magnus Goes North With Summer, Day 16

 Wednesday, June 11

Second day at Oahe Downstream Rec Area. Funny, I still don’t know where the Oahe comes from.  It’s the Missouri River…is the Lake called Oahe? Check this…yes.

Got up to the alarm for the first time in several days. It was 6:30 and a good thing—lightning struck while we were walking. We headed back and it started peppering rain on us just as we arrived back at Magnus.  The mosquitos were worse than ever.

We took a drive to see birds at the dam, but it was too windy to enjoy walking down to the water. In fact, it was too windy to enjoy getting out of the jeep at all, but we did. I saw a Western Grebe out in the water! Too cool. The next day I saw it in the river by our campsite.

 

 Then we tried to find the national grassland on the map but google couldn’t get us there. By driving randomly down gravel roads, we made it to the Fort Pierre National Grassland where there was a small lake and we could take a short walk along the shore.

That was pretty much all the excitement we could stomach for the day, but then—on the way back—we saw Upland Sandpipers!  New life bird for me. Also Bobolinks, but I’d seen them back at Sheyenne National Grassland.

 Bobolink (back view, female)

Upland sandpiper

 

In the afternoon I took Molly for a long, hot jog out along the bike trail. On the way back, we tried to take a shortcut on a gravel road that crossed the trail, but it dead-ended after five minutes or so. I could have gone on through the tall grass—I could see where the river was and I could guess that I was just a little short of the campground, but I chose not to.  For one thing, I wanted to finish my jog, and for another, the grass was pretty tall and my footing would be uncertain.

Then we went for supper. We ended up at Cattleman’s Club Steakhouse after leaving my first choice—Drifters—because the rib-eye was Market Price which was $48. In retrospect it would have been better to stay, because while Ed’s steak at Cattleman’s Club was okay, his blue cheese dressing lacked blue cheese and my meal, chicken fried cod and sweet potato fries, was horrible. It ended up costing more for sub-par food. But after hearing the price for rib-eye, Ed had already made up his mind he wasn’t paying it and would have gotten something else that he would most likely have hated.

Oh well, live and learn. The reviews said their rib-eye was really good, too.

On our evening walk Molly and I scared up two or three turkeys and a pair of phemale pheasants. Also one big buteo but I couldn’t get a look at him before he swooshed away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REVIEW Oahe Downstream Recreation Area site 205

Lovely riverside camping, with a generous helping of mosquitoes to feed a lot of birds

Long, spacious sites. Our site, 205 and the three or so beside it, were off by themselves with plenty of room to spread out. We could see our nearest neighbors but not hear them. The other sites in the loop (Loop 3?) had plenty of space too, but not as much privacy.

Check-in was unnecessary since we made camping reservations online and bought our entrance passes a few campgrounds previously. By doing it online, we thought our only option was to buy  South Dakota Park Entrance passes for both vehicles, which sucked. I later learned from a campground host (different park) that was unnecessary; we only needed one for the vehicle which was driving while we entered/exited the park. So we could buy one pass and move it from one to the other.

Our power worked fine (50-amp) and the water fill on the way in was convenient. And the dump station, too.

Everyone was pretty quiet and polite. Some people drove too fast down the access road and several others let their dogs run off leash and at least one guy was blasting his music in the main loop, but in general it was a polite and peaceful environment. The only real negative was the mosquitoes—on calm days with the temperatures in the 70-80 degree range, they were eating us alive. When the wind blew strongly one day, they were mostly kept off.  We had a few ticks, too, but only a few.

Lots of birds, turkeys, pheasant, yellow warblers, warbling vireos, robins and red-winged blackbirds and kingbirds. Pelicans, geese, and a Western Grebe, and lots of others.  Funny…we saw no animals except a deer or two and only one garter snake.

We were not impressed with Cattleman’s Club Steakhouse—the steak was okay but everything else (fish, salad, sweet potato fries) was not very good at all.