The Badlands: It’s all good

I made it to the Badlands yesterday at about 1 p.m. (Mountain Time Zone).  This isn’t my first trip; I’ve been here several times as a kid and as an adult.  There’s something about this place that takes all of life’s tensions and washes them away.  Blows it away is more apt.  The wind is nearly constant here.  Some people complain about the wind, but I’ve always found the wind soothing.  One of my Iowa relatives used to say that the wind blows the stink off you.

I’m camped just a few miles from Wall Drugs.  This place has nothing in common with Wall Drugs.  Coffee might be five cents at Wall Drugs, but it doesn’t taste anything like the coffee that I roasted myself, ground on a manual knee grinder manufactured over 50 years ago, made in a cone filter without any electricity. and sipped outside while overlooking the wide expanses of the West.

I’m perched on a cliff in Buffalo Gap National Grasslands.  The temperature gets up into the 80’s during the day but falls into the 50’s at night.  I hear coyotes at sunset and steers at sunrise.  I’m just going to let all of this soak in for a few days, but all is well.

Magnolia, Minnesota

I’m not going to lie.  Last night was rough.  I picked up Allie at O’Hare in Chicago at about 11p.m., dropped her off in Milwaukee, and arrived home at about 2 a.m. She was sick and understandably upset about saying goodbye to her boyfriend for who knows how long after having the time of her life in the Greek Isles. Once home, I slept for maybe four hours, off and on.

Then, with the help of a full French press pot of fresh-roasted Brazilian coffee, I began making my way west.  I was originally going to stay off of the interstate, taking Hwy 60 and then Hwy 18 across northern Iowa.  However, there was extensive flooding along that route, so I opted for Interstate 90, boring but not flooded.  By afternoon, I was making frequent bathroom stops to balance out all of the coffee consumed and was singing loudly to myself with the windows open to stay awake.

We arrived at the Magnolia City Campground at about 4 p.m. It’s a typical Midwestern small town with no services except for this nice campground less than a mile from the interstate with full hookups for $10/night. A café offers breakfast but closes at 2 p.m.  There’s a campground sign that says no discounts are offered  because the rates are already so cheap. I can’t disagree: electricity, water, showers, dump station, good Internet coverage from T-mobile, and a bunch of free digital tv stations.

Unfortunately, there’s no grocery store or even a convenience store.  I haven’t really stocked my fridge, so it’s a cold beer and scrambled eggs and cheese for dinner.  The good news is that I’m ahead of schedule and hopeful that I’ll be in the Badlands tomorrow night.

Elvis is very excited about this trip. Or maybe he’s just ready for supper.

Countdown at 5 days

Wisconsin doesn’t win many firsts, but we were apparently the first state in the nation in rainfall over the last two weeks with all of the usual consequences that go along with that. An elderly man in the Madison area was swept away by flood waters from his car into a culvert and drowned.  Milwaukee released 296 million gallons of raw sewage into local rivers and Lake Michigan so that the effluent didn’t back up into people’s basements.  We have had plenty of heat to go along with the rain which has meant high humidity and a healthy crop of mosquitoes.


Closer to home, I moved Justin back into the dorms for the fall semester on Thursday.  He was ready to go back to leading life without parents nagging him, and we were ready to stop nagging him.  Classes start next week.  I talked to him last night on the phone, and it sounded like he was making new friends and settling into dorm life.

Allie is still in Greece, vacationing with her Turkish boyfriend. It sounds like they are having a great time, living on a meager budget but enjoying the street food and beaches. My last “to do” task will be picking her up at the Chicago airport late Tuesday night and driving to her Milwaukee apartment where she will start the fall semester one day late on Wednesday.  I will try to get some sleep on Wednesday before taking off west in the Brew Hut.

Most of my preparation work for the trip west is done.  I’ve been picking up little odds and ends at the last-minute.  The square plate at the bottom of the Brew Hut’s trailer tongue’s jack has seemed a little shaky to me, so Amazon shipped me an 8 dollar Camco cone stand which is supposed to be more stable and multi-functional.  We’ll see.  The plate can be re-installed if the plastic thing doesn’t work out. If it works, I can eliminate the cinder block that I’ve been carrying around as a jack stand.

I also restocked green (raw) coffee beans for the trip.  Friday afternoon was spent roasting so that Julia can have fresh coffee while I’m gone.  Most people don’t know that you can freeze (colder the better) freshly roasted coffee in small one pound freezer bags, and then use one bag at a time (defrosted and staying at room temperature), and the quality is excellent.  Blind taste tests don’t lie. What you don’t want to do is take frozen coffee back and forth out of the freezer allowing it to partially defrost or be exposed to humidity. It should go without saying that the coffee has to be fresh-roasted.  Putting stale coffee into the freezer doesn’t preserve anything.   For myself, I plan on roasting coffee in the Brew Hut while traveling.  Still working out those details.

Other than that, I’ve been stocking the kitchen with canned goods (black beans, coconut cream) and spices so that I can make my staple curries and dirty beans with rice.

Recent reports from the Badlands are that it may be muddy with reduced access to the location that I hoped to camp, but weather changes.  We’ll see how it goes.  There will be a back-up plan.

Preparation and Planning

“Plans made in Jello.”  That’s a full-time nomad’s cliché with meanings at multiple levels.  I remember a minister with a similar sermon:  “Man plans, and God laughs.” Things outside our control often influence the best laid plans.


That’s tough for me, as someone with plans, back-up plans, and back-up to back-up plans. My mentor at the law firm liked to tell me in relationship to the practice of law:  Worry about the things that you can control; let go of the things you can’t control, and practice the skill of learning the difference between the two.  I’ve always been one to try to push more into that first category than most people would do.  Planning and organization do tend to increase the limited ability to control variables.

With that in mind, and two weeks before my scheduled departure out west, I’ve been tightening up the specifics of the plan.  As a general plan, I’m going to drive to the South Dakota Badlands, dry-camp without electrical hookups for awhile at a well-reviewed location, and then make my way over to the Black Hills and Spearfish, where I’ll camp for another week.  I have a few possible locations in mind–mostly dry camping.

From there, my plans are highly variable on the weather.  I’d like to spend some time in the Big Horn mountains of Wyoming and meander across Wyoming to northern Utah. The latter part of September can bring snow and freezing temperatures at higher elevations, so I might have to head lower and south before too long. I will play it by ear, but I need to be in Las Vegas in mid-October to pick up Julia for her portion of the trip.

In preparation, I’ve ordered Benchmark maps for the states I’ve mentioned above, and I’ve been researching google maps, campendium, freecampsites.net, public lands maps, and reviews of different places to camp, hike, and drive.

I bought a small inverter to charge my laptop and other small electronic devices not powered by 12 volts.  It has enough capacity to run the small tv also in case the world suddenly changes, and I need to watch the news or something.  My friend Dean showed me how to repack the wheel bearings with grease on the Brew Hut, so that needed task has been checked off the list. He also checked the brakes for me, which provides peace of mind.  I still need to organize space in the Nissan truck and Brew Hut. Packing clothes and planning food provisioning is also still ahead.

Justin has decided not to bring Elvis the service dog to college, which is probably for the best for now. Although having a service dog at college sounds good in theory, Justin and his caregivers have enough to do without worrying about feeding, watering, and toileting Elvis.  Those tasks are mine at home but would need to be performed by someone other than Justin at school.  Justin’s caregiving hours are limited,  Also, because we live in the country, Elvis has developed a bad habit of barking (for a service dog, not a watch dog) when there are strange noises or strangers (rare).  In a dorm setting, that is a common occurrence and a potential behavior problem.  Julia has asked me to take Elvis along, so that Elvis is not alone in the house all day while she is at work.

Taking Elvis on the trip west has pros and cons, but he is good company so we will make it work.  I know that he would rather be on an adventure rather than left at home. We both have worked hard during the last six years, so it’s only fair that Elvis is rewarded also for his own gray hairs. When we return home before Thanksgiving Break and then during semester break, we will both be put back to work for Justin.

Blackhawk Park COE

My disabled son Justin is home full-time until the end of August, so travel opportunities are limited this month.  After Whitewater Lake, however, my daughter Allie offered to assume care-giving responsibilities for a few days to give me one more trip to test out the Brew Hut’s systems before my planned journey out west in September. Allie and Justin both wanted Elvis the dog to stay at home, so this would be a solo trip for me.

At Whitewater Lake, I tested out the off-grid systems.  For this trip, I wanted to make sure that the on-grid electrical systems were all still working properly.  Temps were expected to be in the upper 80’s and low 90’s, so I wanted the option to use the air conditioning and perhaps some television at night.

Blackhawk Park is an Army Corps of Engineers’ property on the main branch of the Mississippi River about 30 minutes south of La Crosse, Wisconsin. The campground is heavily utilized on the weekends, so reservations are recommended if electrical hookups are desired.  However, I was arriving mid-week so I took a chance, showed up without a reservation, and still found one of the few remaining sites with electricity ($24).  There were lots of remaining  camping sites without hookups available for $18, and some of those were really pretty and right on the river, although a little muddy. Here’s one of those sites:

Another nice feature of this campground is a three-mile loop that can be walked from the campground and next to the river before circling back through some backwaters to the starting place.  This gravel path can also be biked.  I walked the loop in the morning and at night.  Wildlife is mostly birds and jumping fish.  I saw bald eagles each day that I was there.

I was also interested in this area for historical reasons.  When I was a boy, I read a book about Chief Blackhawk, perhaps the most famous Indian chief from the American Midwest. He was a member of the Sioux tribe.  He fought for the British against the Americans in the War of 1812, hoping to get rid of American settlers pushing into Sioux lands.  That didn’t work for him.  Blackhawk continued to be pushed from Illinois, Iowa and then Wisconsin during the Blackhawk War of 1832.

I never knew the specific details of Blackhawk’s final loss on the  banks of the Mississippi River, close to where I was camped.  War is always messy, and this one did not end well for the Sioux or honorably for the Americans.

I knew that we drove Blackhawk’s people into the river, where they drowned and were shot. The part about Blackhawk trying to surrender to the steamboat captain and getting fired upon was new to me.

“I loved my towns, my cornfields, and the home of my people. I fought for it.”  (Chief Blackhawk)

The trip was a success.  The air conditioner worked great in the late afternoons for bringing the temps down to where I could open up the windows and sleep comfortably at night.  I watched a little free tv, which was nice for catching the late light news before bed.

During the next couple of weeks, I will be preparing the Brew Hut for its first long trip.  The plan is to be on the road in three weeks, heading generally for South Dakota and then points west.  Stay tuned.

Back to Wisconsin: Whitewater Lake Campground

My Scamp trailer has not received much use this year.  That needed to change.  After returning home from Alaska, I had a few days before it was time to pick up my son Justin from his summer education program at UW-Whitewater.   My first thought was to head north to a new state park or county park for a couple of days of camping, but then I realized that I could use the Scamp to camp and move my son’s belongings and medical equipment home.

Kettle Moraine State Forest has two units:  north and south.  The south unit has several campgrounds, and one of those campgrounds, Whitewater Lake,  is only about fifteen minutes from my son’s college.  Whitewater Lake is lightly used, especially during the middle of the week.  There are no hookups or showers.  There are water spigots and pit toilets.  Most of the sites are heavily wooded, especially the west loop.  I stayed in the east loop to take advantage of partial sun so that I could use my Renogy solar suitcase to keep my new Renogy pure gel battery fully charged.

The Scamp uses 12 volt power for lights, water pump, portable fan, and to recharge electronic devices. My site had full sun in the mornings, and I was able to fully top off my battery each day with the solar panel.

This was not a hiking trip, although I found it easy to hike 5-7 miles each day by walking Elvis the service dog through the campground loops and the lightly traveled road out to Rice Lake.

Whitewater Lake itself isn’t all that close to the Whitewater campground.

About a five-minute drive away without good walking access, it features a beach and a boat landing. I was able to pull in two bars of LTE for T-mobile at the boat landing, where I downloaded my daily newspaper.

I tried to hike the segment of the Ice Age Trail that passes close to the campground, but the mosquitoes and biting flies cut those attempts short.
How did I spend my time at Whitewater Lake?  Mostly, I read.  I started and completed “The Fallen” by David Baldacci.  I read some “Game of Thrones”, which is my go-to book when I’m between books.  And I read the Milwaukee daily newspaper from beginning to end.  Sadly, that doesn’t take as long as it did at one time.  At night, Elvis and I sat by the campfire and listened to the owls and coyotes.

This was very relaxing trip.  After the constant action of Alaska, I needed some quiet and downtime.  Elvis had no objections.

On my last night, I drove in to Whitewater and took Justin out for sushi (his request).  I am a big sushi fan, but Whitewater, Wisconsin is a long ways from any ocean.  We each had five different kinds of raw fish, well-presented, and four tasted quite fresh.

On the next morning, I hitched up the Scamp and drove over to Justin’s dorm.  His primary caregiver had everything cleaned up and packed into plastic totes.  I loaded all the totes into the Scamp, put the Hoyer lift and shower chair into the pickup bed and headed home.  An hour later, Julia picked up Justin and his few remaining things in the wheelchair van.

With regard to Justin’ first month at college, his caregivers did an outstanding job.  Every semester will be a bit of a battle to line up reliable caregivers, so we were grateful that the summer session went well.  I think that Justin liked the freedom of college life.  As with most young adults, there is a learning curve to balance freedom and responsibility.  I think he learned some things about himself and his potential.  Time will tell.

I had one learning curve of my own during the camping trip.  Fortunately, this episode does not include pictures.  I have not previously used the gas water heater on the Scamp, and I wanted to take a shower before going out to dinner with Justin.  Following the manual, I set the temperature in the middle.  The water heater kicked on right away, and it heated up to the set temperature and then shut off just like it was supposed to.  I disrobed, entered the tiny bathroom and decided that the best way to shower was to sit down on the toilet (this is a wet bath).

I didn’t want to waste any water, so I turned on the shower briefly to get myself wet all over, and then soaped up with the water off.  The water was a little cold, but I thought that maybe the hot water hadn’t made it from the water heater to the shower. When I turned on the shower again, using only the hot water knob, the water was not at all warm. 

As I was screwing around with the shower head and knob to get things warmer, the shower head fell apart on me with cold water randomly spraying at me, and little bits and pieces of the shower head falling into the water below.  Eventually, I found all of the bits, got them together again, and got the shower running only to realize that the manual instructions were horribly wrong as to where the setting needed to be to get warm water.  I finished up my cold shower, dried off, and got dressed.

I turned the thermostat to 3/4 of the way to hot, and the water heater dutifully created hot water.  Next time, I’ll have a hot shower. Learning curves.