The wind was reasonable today. It started out as a light quartering side wind and late in the day became a light tailwind. The big news was that it was cloudy and cold most of the day, starting out in the mid-40s and barely reaching 60 degrees by 2:30 in the afternoon. After that it cleared out and warmed up into the 70s.
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| Still wearing earmuffs at noon! |
We spent the night at Willow Creek Campground on Lake Elwell (free, operated the Bureau of Reclamation). Being Sunday afternoon, there were a number of people water skiing and fishing when we arrived, but by early evening it seemed just about everyone had cleared out and we were left pretty much to ourselves.
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| Willow Creek Campground, which we had pretty much to ourselves. |
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| Playing ball with Lana in the water, and checking out the unusual stones. |
There is ample evidence there of the Ice Age glaciers here - the land is made of layers of glacial till, clay and sand. There was an amazing array of different stones along the lake shore, most of which went unnoticed until I happened upon a somewhat trilobyte-looking fossil. After that discovery we spent some time combing the shore, which was when we started to notice the huge variety of rocks and stones.
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| Our trilobyte find. |
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A few of the more notable rocks that we found, including a geode, a rock that was mainly iron ore
and another that was mostly made of mica. |
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| A sedimentary rock containing sea shells. |
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| Ditto |
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| I have no idea what this is, but it is very intriguing. |
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| There were some interesting bright yellow crystals in this rock. |
There was a pit toilet at the campground, but it was about a quarter of a mile away, near the entrance. So we christened our Luggable Loo (five gallon bucket with tiny toilet lid) in the morning. We were fortunate that there was a three sided picnic shelter next to our campsite, which gave us some privacy and minimized the cold wind blowing on body parts that aren't used to such experiences. It worked quite well, and the deodorant packets did their job, since we had to pack it out to the nearest town since there was no trash service at the campground. We also decided that the trilobyte fossil had a purpose - to keep our bag of toilet paper from blowing away!
About the time we turned in it started raining off and on fairly lightly. By morning the showers were longer and heavier. That created a bit of a problem for us, as the road to the pit toilet was mainly bentonite clay. In spite of our traction control, Loraine's front wheel drive got stuck going up a very slight rise. Fortunately, the rutted track made backing up very easy, as the trailer's wheels would start to go out of the tracks, only to slide back into them. So we backed up a ways and pondered our situation. We decided that I'd get out and push on the passenger side of the van and Alea would steer the van and trailer into the prairie grass on the opposite side. Fortunately, that worked, and we were soon on our way again.
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| The road we almost got stuck on (taken the day before when it was dry). |
Alea would have liked for me to inch along carefully, but I knew that momentum was necessary if we were to get through the slippery sections of mud on the grass and that final stretch of mud before we reached the gravel road back to US 2. So we went hell bent for leather and in no time we were back on the highway. Along the way Loraine had slung no small amount of mud onto #531...
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| #531's mud bath. |
As I dropped Alea off and started driving down US 2, the added weight from the mud was very noticeable (as was the mud caked into the tread of the tires). I'd estimate it added at least a few hundred pounds of additional weight. So I stopped a few miles down the road and managed to find a stick to scrape a couple hundred pounds of it off. That helped, and in Chester I found a car wash and got most of the rest of it off. Loraine was feeling herself after that.
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