Westbound on US 2 - Day 11 WILDFIRE SMOKE TURNAROUND in Montana!!!

We left Little Egypt County Park in North Dakota, and headed further west. Stopped in Williston to fuel up. Prices were a little higher for fuel than they were in the Eastern part of the state for diesel. $3.74 a gallon, but that was premium diesel. We prefer to run premium diesel if it's available. 

We headed west and crossed into Montana, and things got pretty flat...  Big Sky country for sure.

Off to the North and the West, the wildfire smoke was getting thicker and darker.

We started pulling up some of the wildfire smoke warnings and the air quality reports being issued. This is basically the direction we were going... Right into the worst of it!

We cruised along, merrily enjoying the smoother roads and the gently rolling landscape.  Montana's roads were definitely in better shape than what they were in North Dakota. We encountered very little road construction. Most of it was already done with smooth roads ahead.

We saw some really pretty terrain, through the smoke haze, and wished the sun had been out to really see the details and the landscape.

We saw little vignettes in the countryside, like this little church. Perhaps it had been a school? I think it was a church because of the windows.  Made us think of the people who came through this area long ago. The hardships they suffered to get this far. Then to create a community and find a way to scrape out a living or achieve sustenance. And still have time to gather and worship and erect a building for meeting. The heart of the community.

Well, as long as we stayed inside the motorhome with the air conditioning on, creating a positive pressure outwards, we weren't smelling too much of the smoke. But when we would stop to fuel up, or walk the dog, the smoke was very heavily present in the air. 

For those of you who don't know, I had severe lung damage from a chemical spill years ago. I was on oxygen for many years. I've worked very hard to get my lungs to the point where they operate fully without needing assistance. I did use my inhaler three or four times during the day just to try to keep my airways open and functioning. I was not comfortable.

We had set our sights on going to Fort Peck Corps of Engineers Campground in Montana. We were checking the maps of ongoing wildfires in the area to the West and the North. That seemed to be where most of the wind was coming from. Things did not look good at all!  The air quality index was through the roof for any place we were thinking about going.

On top of the poor air quality, the other thing we were battling were the temperatures. Everything was going up up, and according to the weather channel they were going to see unseasonably warm high temperatures in the Montana and Oregon regions for the next two to three weeks.

What does that mean for us? It means staying inside with the air conditioning on and not even being able to boondock camp anywhere. It would mean that we would have to be in a park with electrical hookups, or run the generator constantly to have the air conditioning on.

We decided to forge ahead to Fort Peck Corps of Engineers Park. We had made reservations there for two nights. It is located down in a valley area right next to the dam. It's called the Downstream Campground.  We were hoping it would be a secluded area where the smoke would not bother us so much. 

It was a very nice campground with electric at our site for $25. After applying our Federal America the Beautiful Senior Pass, it was only $12.50 per night.

We tried to walk around a little bit. Just up to the attendant's booth by the host site and back. That was enough for me. The temperatures were increasing and it really was not very comfortable at all.

We stayed inside with the dog, and did a little internet research. The more we look ahead at weather and air quality, the less it looked like we would be able to continue our journey west.

We didn't even cook outside. I whipped up a meal of spaghetti and meatballs on the stove.  I'm glad I brought a variety of foods in the freezer, some that can be made inside and some that can be cooked outside on the Blackstone griddle.

We crawled into bed that night, hoping that maybe things would change in the morning. 

First thing looking out our window, we could barely see the edge of the dam and the distance. It's right at the edge of the campground. I think it got worse overnight.

These are the two towers by the electric generation plant, right next to the campground. We could barely see them through the haze.

So between the high temperatures and the wildfire smoke, we made the tough decision to abort the rest of our trip Westbound on US 2. 

As we were packing up, I made this little video about our decision. We did not make this decision lightly. We had really been looking forward to this trip.  

We notified the office that we would not need our campsite for the next night. That way somebody else could get it if they needed to. It was time to turn around and head back towards Wisconsin.

And if you think we are taking this wildfire smoke too dramatically, here is a shot of what it was like as we headed back...

We traveled 174 miles this day 

1,122 miles so far. 

Fueled up at $3.69 a gallon

We were fighting a headwind and side wind. 12.71 MPG 

Westbound on US 2 - Day 10 Little Egypt County Park on Lake Sakakawea ND

We left Devil's Lake on Grahams Island in North Dakota and headed on Westward. We were aiming our sights to get further west, maybe even into Montana.

The skies were dark and rumbly, and we had some intermittent rain on and off as we headed westward.

But it was soon getting worse in the skies were turning very dark. 

We stopped at a small town called Granville in North Dakota. They had a small city campground and we decided to pull over there and wait out the downpouring torrential rains.

Expected rainfall was approximately 2 inches, in torrential sheets. Good reason to be off the highway.

Here is a little clip while we waited: 

After the storm passed, we kind of glanced around the little city campground in Granville. If we really needed a place to pull over for the night, it would be pretty handy. But it was right by the highway.

Here is their website: 

https://www.granvillend.net/recreation

The only information we could find was that it was $10 a night. That might have been old information though. 

But once the skies cleared up a bit we figured we could head further west and maybe get into a little county park we had read about near Ray, North Dakota.

We love the changing terrain. We noticed some of the oil fields now as we were in the western side of North Dakota.

We even spotted out a couple "fixer uppers" in case we were so inclined....

The beauty of the terrain as it rolled out ahead of us. We were getting hillier and hillier and closer to our destination for the evening.

The sun managed to poke out a little bit, but notice the grey sky in the background. Those aren't clouds. That is campfire smoke blowing down from Saskatchewan, Canada. 

We saw some rangeland with cattle, and sometimes they were up near the road. Usually they were pretty far away. 

Soon we found our way down to this little county campground called Little Egypt in Williams County, North Dakota. We saw some pictures and read some reviews and thought this might be the type of place we would want to spend the night. 

Here's their website for more information:

https://www.williamsnd.com/little-egypt/

There are 21 sites, and a campground host. There are only pit toilets but there is a small dump station and water. We did read some warnings that the water had very high iron content, so we didn't use it. 

Most of the sites are pull through, all in a row up on the ridge overlooking the water. Four of them are down below in a little valley by the camp host site. Those might be nice if it's windy conditions?

These maps aren't the best, but it's what they had on their website that I could cut and paste.

The last section of road into the park is gravel, we drove along slowly admiring the beautiful Russian olive trees planted alongside the road.  The Russian olive trees extended through the campground along the backsides of all of the campsites. 

We chose a site and tried to get level. Up at the end where the trees were, to be in the shade, but it was really slanted and tilted. We had to pull forward on the site, almost to the front end of it to find a level spot. Now we were out in the wide open area and no shade.

If you are in a travel trailer you might have an easier time leveling yourself because a travel trailer will pivot in the middle. Raising the front or the rear helps with the leveling when there's only an axle in the center. 

But with a motorhome you are stuck with a more square shape, with wheels at each corner. It's a little more difficult to level. We finally did just as the skies opened up and started raining again!!!!

We could see the beach that was down over the ledge of the ridge, through the fence posts. We could faintly see the shore on the other side. It looked like it was going to be really interesting once the rain stopped.

It rainef and rained and rained for the entire afternoon. 

The best thing to do was to hook up the Starlink, which we did in the overhead skylight. Then we put on some old movies on Hulu and sprawled out across the bed. Nick enjoyed the afternoon very much, sprawled out between us.

Earlier in the day we had stopped for a few extra groceries. I was surprised to see our favorite brand of pizza that is made in Minnesota. We grabbed one and took it along for a quick meal if we were unable to cook outside.  It looked like tonight would be the night! Plus, it was taking up a lot of room in our little freezer.

I am so happy that we now have a propane oven in our motorhome. If you missed it, here is my YouTube about sacrificing a drawer and moving around a few things to have space to install this three burner RV stove with propane oven: 

https://youtu.be/lwlGvU7RPRg?si=h6kS85zINQPZCqVk

Also I am happy that a full size pizza pan fits inside of the oven. Turning on the oven light, I have an extra oven thermometer inside just to monitor the temps. We have to adjust the settings on the valve, we haven't done that yet.

Ahhhhhh in no time the whole camper smelled wonderful, and the pizza was ready. Nick helped us by eating a few of the crusts.

At just about dusk, the rain had stopped and we had enough time to get out and walk the dog. A tiny bit of sunshine was peeking through the clouds to the west. The weather report looked really good for the next day, minus of course the warnings about the wildfire smoke.

Ahhhhh The next morning was beautiful! We could now see across the lake. The name of the lake is Sakakawea, named after the famous Indian princess who helped with the Lewis and Clark expedition.  This is a full sunshine morning, but note the haze and the sky?

In this photo you can now see why we had to pull forward to get level on the pull through site. Back further into the trees is where it was tilted. If this were a hot day in the 90° sunshine, we might not have been so comfortable on this campsite.

We hooked the dog up to his harness and long leash. It was time to go to the beach!

What a wonderful time we had all morning out playing along on the sandy beach. Although there was a funny smell in the air, the smoke held off enough that we could really enjoy ourselves. I would love to stay here for a week if we could. This was a really really nice place...

I will let the photos speak for themselves:

Here's a YouTube that I made of our traveling that day with all the rain and then our evening as well as the morning on the beach. Please like and subscribe if you click on it? It's non-sponsored and I don't earn anything.  But the last part of the video is the fun part on the beach.

We made up a little lunch and then decided it was time to get moving further west. This was such a nice campground and the view out the front windshield was absolutely beautiful.  The winds seem to be coming up from the south which helped alleviate some of the wildfire smoke. The skies were actually looking blue again for a bit.

For only $15 a night, with electric hookups, this place really can't be beat. We walked up and down the rest of the sites. There were only three or four other campers here.

Just before we were ready to leave, three or four large trucks and trailers pulled in with a number of zero-turn riding lawn mowers and other lawn equipment. A whole crew of County workers hopped out and started working in the campground. It got noisy really quick. It was probably a really good time to leave!  At the other edge of the campground there was also a golf course that had mowing equipment out and about. I suppose after all of the rain, they were anxious to get things taken care of.

So off we went, heading towards Montana!!

We traveled 231 miles this day

That is 948 mi so far.

We fueled up for $3.74 for premium diesel and averaged 14.4 mpg

Westbound on US 2 - Days 8 & 9 - Graham Island at Devils Lake ND

After leaving Turtle River State Park, we decided to head further west and set our goal as to Devil's Lake, also in North Dakota. We learned some things about Devil's Lake along the way:

The draining of wetlands to develop agricultural land in the area has aggravated flooding at Devils Lake. Drainage of the basin's wetlands and conversion of the basin's native prairie to cropland has resulted in water moving more rapidly into the lake, increasing water levels.^[14] In addition, the diversion of natural water flows is also considered to have contributed to the flooding.^[14]

An increase in precipitation between 1993 and 1999 caused the lake to double in size, forcing the displacement of more than 300 homes and flooding 70,000 acres (28,000 ha) of farmland

Because of a high salt content, the first Anglo-Americans to the area probably equated the brackish water with bad spirits, hence the current name. Today, without treatment, the lake water is not good for drinking due to the high amounts of sulphate, lime and other natural minerals.

We drove on down onto Graham Island State Park, and wandered among the sites looking for the type of camping we like to do. What is really nice is that the park is basically divided up into four areas. 

One area in the middle, it's all row upon row of parallel parked RVs on full service sites complete with electric water and sewer. It is called the LaRose section. It's not our kind of thing, but for people who enjoy that, there are plenty of sites available for that type of camping. They were higher priced called "premium" sites. 

The next section to the east was rolling grassy hills with trees here and there. This is the Ziebach section.  Open landscaped grassy sites and a lot of room with trees scattered here and there. These sites were electric and water. We considered maybe taking one of them but thought we better finish driving around and check out the rest. 

To the far section in the east was a section of rustic camping with primitive sites. More suited for boondocking or for tenting. No electric, and just pit toilets nearby. Very nice though and situated pretty far apart from each other. This was a very quiet section of the park.

The fourth section, to the west, called Howard. It was a winding road through the woods with nicely separated sites, tall trees, and patches of grass. Each site is protected from each other with large sections of dense underbrush and tall trees. This is the section that we would call home for two nights.

We chose a very nice site. I got out to walk to the back of the site to check it out, as well as help guide Steve backing into it. I suddenly noticed something on the picnic table. It made a little noise and moved. It was a huge hawk!

It must have been hurt or dazed. It kept making a little shrieking sound over and over. But it would not move away from the site. So I slowly walked away while I filmed it. It's in the video link down below. We decided instead to take a different site and leave the hawk alone.

We went further on down around the loop and found a really nice site. It was a pull through site with a beautiful grassy area that sloped down to nicely filled in woods with thick shrubbery. We really liked this one!

I don't remember what the premium sites were. But the regular sites that we chose were $25 a night.

Again, with the North Dakota state park system we had to pay online, with the $5.80 reservation fee, and the additional $7 for the vehicle fee. I tried to buy the vehicle fee permits for the next two days but it only allows you to buy one permit per day. So now I had to remember to get back online the next day, and the day after, to purchase two more vehicle fee permits. Or ride our bike up to the office and purchase them in person at the counter when they were open.

Regardless, it was a very nice campsite and we got settled in. 

Walking around, we noticed a couple of these big huge pelicans. They were flying overhead and dipping down into the water. It was amazing to see such big birds. We have pelicans over by Lake Michigan, but they are not as big as these guys!!

The first evening, we heard a strange humming noise off in the distance over the water. It was a low tone but actually a buzzing sound. We weren't sure what it was. 

After dusk, we were inside the motorhome watching TV and I was finishing up the dishes. Steve went out after dark with Nicholas for a last call potty break. 

Well well well! We were just completely bombarded by lakeflies! (I think they call them "midges" out there)

There were literally millions of them finishing against the glass of the kitchen window, looking to come in where the light was on inside. All I could see was the squirming of a million little insect bodies from the darkness outside. INVASION!!!

Steve had me turn off all of the lights inside of the motorhome so he could get in the door with the dog. 

As it was, probably 50 or so lake flies made it in the open door with him and the dog.

We spent the next hour hunting them down and squishing them carefully with tissues, not making a mess on our walls or ceiling. They don't bite. They're about an inch to maybe inch and a half long with pretty long wings. They make buzzing sounds like a mosquito, only louder! We are used to them, they hatch on Lake Winnebago and along the shore of Lake Michigan in the springtime. Sometimes there's a second hatching in August. And I guess that's what was happening here...

While it might have really grossed some people out, it really didn't bother us too much. We knew what they were and we knew it wasn't bad. And we knew during the daytime they would pretty much go away.

In the morning, there was probably about a hundred hanging underneath our awning. It was a nice breeze out and they were hanging on for dear life. 

That evening, we just made sure that we didn't keep any outside lights on to attract them, and we pulled our shades on the motorhome when the inside lights were on. They are pretty much room darkening blackout shades so it wasn't as bad letting the dog out one last time before bedtime.

During our stay at the campground, we took out our e-bikes. We wandered all around through the park and checked things out.

We left Nick in the motorhome with all of the shades drawn, the TV on loud so it would drowned out any outside noise, and our Wi-Fi camera surveying him. He curled up on the love seat with his chew toy and behaved himself while we were biking around the park.

We put on almost 4 miles, just within the park boundaries itself. It was kind of fun, and we discovered something that we would be going back to later on in the afternoon.

We took a little break and then we loaded the little trailer on the back of our bicycles. Into the little trailer hopped Nick, not knowing what adventure was going to await him...

It was a visit to something brand new to him, his very first time in a fenced-in DOG PARK!!!!

Since we got him last December on Christmas Eve, he has never been off a leash unless it was in our little fenced in potty yard at home. We are extremely concerned about his ability to return when called if he ever got loose. That's why his previous owners gave up on him. Twice he got loose from them and was hiding in the woods, avoiding anyone and anything trying to catch him. Actually the second time his leash was tangled up in something and he was bound up and starving and dehydrated for 6 days before chewing himself free. We finally caught him in a live trap but he was skin and bones, dangerously close to death. So we will never ever let him off a leash. 

It was important that we walked the entire perimeter of the dog park, checking the fence for any holes or anything dangerous. After double-checking everything--- we were able to let him off the leash!!

We brought along a little toy ball to play fetch. The temps were increasing and so was the humidity.

But he didn't care....

He played and played and played, fetching that ball and racing around like a crazy dog with no leash attached to his harness. It was an exhilarating experience for him.

Totally exhausted, he dropped down underneath the bench, with his tongue hanging very very low. We had brought along his water dish and a bottle of water for him to take sips from during the afternoon.

I think he was too tired to even get back up again. After a long time he was able to compose himself and we loaded him back into the trailer behind the bike.

It was nice to come back, and relaxing our chairs under the awning. But we did notice that there was getting to be a haze in the air, and saw reports of the North Dakota air quality being hampered by the wildfires up north and to the west. I was noticing a difference in my breathing, and we started to track the maps online.

Here is a video over time at the park, it starts with the hawk, the lake fly invasion, our bike ride around the campground, and Nick's happy time in the dog park:

After two nights and 3 days here, it was time to move on. Our next stop was going to be at Lake Sakakawea at Little Egypt Campground.

We had traveled 89 miles on Monday 

717 mi total 

Fuel fill up in North Dakota was $3.24 a gallon for premium diesel, averaging 13.6 miles per gallon with some wind