We have been having a beautiful run of weather, but this afternoon it did it's thing once more. We have a thrunder storm watch until 9 pm tonight and have had a few angry Thunder storms once more threaten with angry skies!clouds around this afternoon but only a few drops of rain, so far! We will hope that is stays nice as we have a full campground and even a couple in the overflow area at horse camp. Hate to see folks have the weekend ruined when the come out to stay with us. None the less most eveyone seems to be having a good time so we hope that things continue for them.

The office and gift shop is located in one of the original ranch houses.Last Thursday we visited a refuge for wild or feral horsed that was started to allow some of them to once more roam the Black Hills which once had some fairly significant heards of them. It is a large ranch of about 13,000 acers which was once owned by two local ranchers who wanted see the free roaming mustangs return and so began a foundation that operates the refuge today and they also donated the land for them. Horses that live on it are decendants of those brought here by the founders as well as some additional ones that are rescued from those rounded up on BKM lands farther west which are not considered to be adoptable. A few come from other sources but all are allowed to range pretty much as they would in the wild. An interesting sidelight is that these mares are on birth control, via treated grain that is left out forHorses roam freely, must as they did before the lands were fenced. A mare with her foal of only a few months age seem to be posing for us.them and which proves to be about 80% effective. Some of the excess colts are sold when buyers can be found and the remainder live out their lives on the refuge. When visiting the refuge, it is about 16 miles to the south of Hot Springs, SD on SD71 and then 3 miles of gravel roads to the west. There is no cost to visit the ranch house area, but they also have a two hour guided tour that does cost. We took the guided tour and it was really a great one well worth the time spent. If you are in the area I suggest that you consider a visit to the Black Hills An alligator carved into the stone of a cave on the refuge property that is said to be from prehistoric times.Wild Horse Sanctuary.

In the tour you will not only get to see heards of horses that are organized into natural bands, much as happens in the wild, but there are Tom turkeys are strutting their stuff for the passing tour!also mares with foal, as birth control is not 100%, there are numerous wild trukeys that seem to be unafrain of the passing tours, and there are cliffs with petroglyphs as well as several historic sites and the locations of settings for several movies. The petroglyphs have been dated to be more than 1000 years old and there is even a carved alligator in one of the caves.There are also initials and dates from as early as 1800 to as recently as 1978. Since the founding ranchers bought the land in the early 80's the cliffs have been protected as much as possible from vandals.

A rather ugly looking buffalo cow came by and looked us over! We had another thunderstorm last night but once more dodged the main part with only a few minutes of very heavy rain. Just a few miles A nice pronghorn buck seemed to be posing for us! away there was a major hail storm with heavy rain. I guess we must be living right but we are sure ready for some dry weather. We did open up the shop building in case a visitor wished to take shelter but none did so, not even the people who had a tent & a pop-up!

Today we are off to Rapid City once more to do our tourist thing. I'll post some pictures from Custer State Park for now. I should have some new ones for the next entry.

Today is just a lazy day as we have done almost nothing! I took Pam out to dinneer last evening for her birthday. She is just a few years past the age to vote! devil

At present we have checked out one camper from yesterday and one in today. That seems to be about our limit today. It is the warmest day so far that we have experienced with temperatures in the mid 80's. Tomorrow we are back on the road to do more tourist things!

The park was completely full last evening and even one in the horse camp. Yesterday was a beautiful day but toward evening we had a really nasty looking storm roll in. Most of it went to our north and lots of hail in Hot Springs but we had only a few minutes of hard rain, with a very few, pea sized hail. Later, about 9 pm it rained very hard giving us another inch or more of rain in less than 2 hours. It was also a bit touchy as we had a full campground. today is cool but very pretty and few clouds. Weather forecast is for improving weather so we are hopeful!

Yesterday we took a trip to Chadron, NB to do some shopping. Hot Springs has only two small markets for groceries and a Shopco store for general merchandise. Chadron is our nearest Walmart, at 64 miles and the true super Walmart is in Rapid City and 87 miles away. We found that Chadron has change only a little in the 25 years since I was last there and really offers little for a tourist. Rapid City is a very interesting small city, several times as large as Chadron.

Today has been a bit busy as our summer intern was trying to get away a bit early to go home to eastern SD for the weekend. I helped him out by operationg a mower here in the campground and a few other minor chores. We also had a brief thunderstorm about 5 pm but it was mostly noise and little action. Tonight is Friday the 13th and a full moon, but it looks to be a beautiful evening all the same!

Today brings another cool, yet beautiful day. We are off duty and so will be travelig to do some shopping and see a few sites, shortly. As promised, here is a bit more about our duties here at Angustura and Shep's Canyon.

Shep's Canyon is about a mile by water from the rest of the park and 26 miles by road. As such we operate in a pretty independant mode with our staff organized quite differently than the main park. There are Pam & I as campgound hosts, a soon to graduate college student/summer intern, and a part-time employee who does cleaning and works on the intern's days off. While there are defined duties for the hosts here like in the main park, we are unique in that the other two employees are assigned here all of the time. The four of us just workthings out such that all needed work gets done and pretty much do things our own way. Officially the intern is in charge of we hosts and the part-time worker but we operate more as a team of friends than a work group.

Pam & I are officially on duty from noon on Friday through noon on Monday, but we do have allownace to go to town if need be for church or to eat out. Our days off are flexible if any need should arise as the intern also works weekends. His days off are Tuesday & Wednesday and the part-time worker (Dawn) is on duty those days. Since we & Nathan both live in the park, we are available in the hours that Dawn is not here.

Our duties are to greet guests, rextock bathroom supplies(as needed), clean fire pits, and help the paid workers if they should need assistance. We are supplied a full hook-up site, a Kawsaki Mule to use and an annual parks pass for a year. We also receive a VIP discount card that gains us free or reduced admission to most of the attractions through out the Black Hills. While this park does not yet have many large trees, there are trees planted and keeping them watered is one of the things that all of us do.  We enjoy the independent, team nature of our work relations here and consider this to be the best volunteer position in the park.

On the other side there are 5 campgrounds, three of which have camping cabins that the volunteer clean. Each of those  campgrounds have a host couple and two of them have two host couples. In addition there is a couple who are roving hosts to cover when other hosts are off duty and a couple who work maintenance in the park. In addition there are about a dozen permanent park employees and three of four seasonal employees.

On June 10 it was a beautiful day and we were off to Keystone in order to take a ride on the old, historic rail road via a steam engine. We both enjoy these old trains and have ridden quite a few, but never seem to tire of it. One of the nicest parts for this one was that thanks to the card supplied by the South Dakota State Parks, we got to ride for free! Even so, I believe that everyone who paid the price ($28 adults & $12 children) seemed to believe that it was worth the cost. The train pulled out of Keystone at about 2:30 pm and was roughly an hour to travel up the canyone to Hill City, where we had a short stop. We then returned to Keystone agian arriving back just before 5 pm. We could hardly have picked a nicer day for the trip and highly recommend it. You can board at either end and then if early in the day you are allowed to spend time in the town, returning on a later train. With Hill City so small we chose not to do that but simply stayed on board for the return trip. In route from Hill City to Keystone there is a lot of narration given with history of the rail road and the engine. They also point out many of the old mines along the route that were the reason for the track having been put where it is. You would be wise to call ahead for reservations as the train is quite popular and does sell out at times.

Muffie spent the day in camp and our summer intern we work with was kind enough to stop in and take her out for a walk. She really does very well when left home but it is nicer for her with someone to share some attention with her. Nathan is a great worker and a real boon to the operation of this campground. We are very furtunate to have such a good group to work with on our side of the lake!

One of the things that we enjoy about where we are is that there are only ourselves, a summer intern, and a part-time employee who lives just outside of the park, who share the duties of the operations here. We do help occasionally with some cleaning when they need it or restock things like toilet paper, but no heavy cleaning as the paid workers do all of that. We find both Nathan and Dawn to be great people both to work with and also to socialize with. Nathan, the intern lives in an RV just across the road from us and Dawn is within walking distance. We are supplied with portable radios for communication with the main park, but seldom have much need for that. I'll post more of our life and work here on my next entry.smiley

Things seem to be looking up! The rain is gone after several days of cloudy/rainy weather. The sun is out and it is beautiful with the forcast mostly sunny for the next week. We were warned before we came of hot, dry weather but so far we have used heat most nights and many days and only run the air conditioner two days. It has been an unusually wet and cool spring here but it is beautiful as a result with lots of wild flowers.

One of the more interesting places we have visited thus far has been Rapid City. It has a population of about 70k but is very much the small town atmosphere and people seem friendly. The town has a lot of character with one of the more unique things being that they have a sculpture on nearly every street corner of the downtown area. All 43 past presidents are there on one corner or another and there are also corners with Native American leaders as well.  If this was done to encourage folks to walk areound the city, it has been very successful as we have covered about half of them so far with intention of continuing to do this until we have visited them all. In the process we see many other visitors also walking the streets and taking pictures of the statues as well. Each one has been sponsored by a local business or civic organaziation. They really add a lot of character to the city.

Another stop that we made while there was to visit the "Chapel in the Hills." It is an exact replica of a Lutheran church in Norway built in 1150. This one was built from architecural drawings of the original and supplied by the Norwegian government. It doesn't take long to see, but it is a stop not to be missed if you visit Rapid City!

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