Boondocking in the Pawnee Grasslands –Sunday, June 23, 2013

Sunday morning we headed east from Hwy 25 to check out the Pawnee National Grasslands. According to the internet there were a ton of roads that wandered through the grasslands and many of them had areas designated for boondocking.   It wasn’t long before we discovered that the boondocking areas marked on the map were not exactly places you could pull up with a motor home.  It was more a case of you better have a four wheel drive and a tent.  The only place to park would have been in a rather steep ditch or on the far side of the ditch and the only place to sleep would be in your vehicle or in a tent on the side of the road.  We did however have a nice long drive wandering along gravel roads all through the grasslands. It was pretty boring!

Here are the Grasslands.

Here is a close up of the grass lands

 

After traveling more than 75 miles at 25 miles per hour we ended up only 23 miles from where we had started.  When we pulled back onto Hwy 14 I noticed a national park camping sign so we thought what the heck and went to check it out.  We parked the MH at the entrance unhooked the jeep and went on into the park for a look around. The campground was picturesque, green grass, beautiful shade trees, and almost empty.  It was also right in our price range, $6.00 per night with Jim’s discount.  What could be more perfect after a slightly disappointing day?  We were soon to find out.

 

I noticed when we were getting parked and set up there seemed to be quite a few months fluttering around and even mentioned it to Jim. I have to admit they are not one of my favorite bugs as they always make me think of bats with their flapping wings, fuzzy little bodies, and beady little eyes. Ugh!!

We decided our budget would allow for us to spend three days in the park so we put down our leveling jacks, extended our slideout and started planning what we would do each day of our stay. 

All day long we had been watching thunder clouds build and then drift away.  We listened to the weather report and learned that there would be some heavy thunder storms to our east but we were not expected to have any in our immediate area.  About ten we headed for bed and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.  About midnight we were both blasted awake by thunder and lightning.  We opened up the curtains and lay on the bed watching it for awhile, and then I got up and walked to the front of the MH and opened up the curtains and called to Jim to come and watch from the front. Lying in the bed we had been missing a lot.  The storm went on for 2 ½ hours and we sat up the entire time watching the lightning, most of which was lightning bolts going from cloud to cloud rather than from the clouds to the ground.  There were times that it actually looked like it was daylight. Jim tried and tried to get pictures and then just as the show was winding down he put the camera on video and did catch a couple of good shots but we haven’t  yet figured out how to get snap shots from the video, I remain optimistic that we will eventually figure it out.