The vastness of the prairie sky is addictive. Once you've spent a while surrounded by nothing but grass and sky you start to feel closed in whenever there is something else near you. We tried to go back to regular campgrounds, but you find yourself wanting more space, asking why are these things blocking my sky?
It took me a while, but I eventually I realized that what draws me in about the prairie is that it's the only landscape that offers the vast unbroken horizon of the sea. This is why almost no one can come here without remarking on the "sea of grass" or the "islands" of trees within it. The grasslands are the land playing at being the sea.
We went to the other side of Buffalo Gap National Grasslands to a little campground called French Creek. It was a strange little campground, surrounded by a fence, but with a big gate. I figured it was tent-only, but there were no signs saying that, and the gate was open. As a U.S. taxpayer this is technically speaking, my land, so I drove the bus in and parked next to picnic table.
The ranger who came by the next morning did not like that one bit. I wasn't rude, but I did tell him if he didn't want people parking in the campground then maybe consider signs and a lock.
French Creek is near the town of Fairburn, home to about 100 people. We came here because Corrinne is a rock hound and this is the one and only place on earth to find something called a Fairburn agate. Corrinne went rock hunting the first evening we were there, but came up empty. The next morning she took the kids out to the agate beds and Olivia promptly found a Fairburn. She spent the rest of day teaching everyone else how to find one. *Daddy, you have to **look**...*
We left the next day, headed for another national grassland in Nebraska. Corrinne and kids drove ahead to the campground while I dumped and filled our water tank in the nearby town of Crawford NE. I was just about to head down the 20 miles of dirt road when Corrinne called to say it was tent-only. Hey, at least this one had signs.
We ended up staying in Crawford at the city park. It was deserted, pretty close to free, had two playgrounds and a livestock auction that was could listen to all afternoon.
The next day we pushed on to the third grassland on our list, Pawnee Grassland, just over the Colorado border. Here, finally, we again found something as nice as Buffalo Gap near Wall. The road in was one of the roughest we've done, but we made it more or less intact. The first night we just pulled off the road, but then the rig that had been on the ridge overlooking the whole grasslands packed up and left so we swooped in and grabbed the spot.
It was a pleasant place to stay for a week. I could work, the kids played. The cows came by to investigate us. There's something about this sea of grass that makes it seem as though just watching it is enough. You don't need to do anything, just observe the land, the sky, the ever changing light.
We'd have stayed longer, but unlike our spot outside of Wall, in Pawnee Buttes the nearest water and dump facilities are over an hour away, and it's a rough road in and out. Too rough to risk when your main goal is get to a specific place at a specific time. We stayed as long as we could, but when the water tank ran dry we fired her up and pointed our nose south.
