Traveling across Nebraska and playing in the Sandhills for as long as we can.
With gas prices at all time highs, we've been putting off our annual travel, but needed to get out of the city. I care for an 81 year old gentleman, who is beyond his tent camping and speed boating years, so we travel with an RV and pontoon boat for stability on the water. Both of which are gas hogs. The RV averages 6 miles to the gallon and the pontoon about 2-4.
We usually only boondock at free camping areas, but Nebraska isn't a state that offers much of that, so we decided to check out a State Park we haven't experienced yet. Tom has lived in Nebraska all of his life and has always been an avid traveler.
I was surprised that he hasn't been everywhere in the state. Since I'm not one to frequent the same places repeatedly, this worked out great for me. I'm always down to visit new places.
At Box Butte Reservoir State Park there are approximately 40 campsites with 10 being directly on the shoreline. Electrical hookups are available, which is what we reserved. All sites, except those along the shoreline are 'first come first serve'. Those along the shore are reservation only. Primitive sites are $15 and those with electric hookups are $30 per night.
We reserved site 10, which was compatible with 50amp rigs, but were pleased to find out they had separate plug-ins for 15/20,30 and 50 amp outlets, so any rig is able to use them. The sites on either side of us were unoccupied, which was a bonus and something we were hoping for when we made our reservations.
We don't like to leash our dogs and they're both well trained, so they were able to run free for the whole trip. If they aren't able to enjoy themselves and explore, it ruins the fun for us as well.
Nearly all of Nebraska's State Parks are Reservoirs created from damming the few rivers that flow through the state. There are virtually zero lakes nearly all of them are artificial. Box Butte Reservoir is the direct result from damming the Niobrara River.
Part of this is because well over a third of the state is covered with what are called Sandhills, which are very large sand dunes created by the winds over thousands of years. It's a geological feature only found in one other area on the other side of the world in China.
With the heat the way it's been and again because of the gas prices it was cheaper to rent a electric hook up site, rather than run the generator, so this was the first time in decades we broke down and paid to camp. To accompany the heat, we are also in a drought, which means the farmers are irrigating a lot, so all the rivers and reservoirs are quite low at the moment.
We didn't figure this out until dropping the boat in the lake. The water level was so low that only 1/2 of the lake was accessible by boat and Box Butte is already one of the smaller reservoirs. We had originally planned to stay 4 days, but cut it down to two instead.
Two days is the minimum stay if you want to get to know any new area and the first day I spent much of the time hiking where I could to take as much in as possible. On the second night we had quite a few strong storms roll through that sparked at least one tornado about 140 miles east of us.
Luckily it was still light out after they passed and I was able to get some beautiful shots of rainbows, in an area with few views, considering we were sitting down in a low laying canyon.
As for the buttes, which the area is named after, we saw one area with some cool looking formations. There were absolutely zero spots along the highway to stop and take a picture though. We've found this to mostly be the case when traveling throughout the state.
There are a few scenic byways that do over some amazing views. It seems where the best views exist, there's not even a shoulder along the side of the road to pull over onto. Instead they have Historic site pull offs with a plaque that offers the history of the area.
Unfortunately, most of these sites have you looking out across a cornfield at nothing significant. It usually isn't worth the stop.
We definitely weren't ready to head home early, so we hopped around to each reservoir that were along our path back towards home. Coming up next will be both Merritt and Sherman Reservoir State Recreation Area. I'll be uploading some video from each of these areas.
I haven't been blogging for a long while, but hope to change that.
You can expect one or two blogs a week from here on out.
Please make sure to take the time to get outside and bond with your environment. Your health will thank you at every level of your being and please share your experiences with the world. Personal communal knowledge is beneficial to us all, because this interaction is essential to our evolution.
Thank you and I hope your day unfolds on your terms.
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