Tag: fort peck

KC to Spearfish and beyond (Installment 4)

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Camping, Friends, Learning, Sightseeing, Traveling

After Kansas City, we worked our way north and spent our first night’s stopover at a great little city park in Elk Point, South Dakota. $15/nite for 50 amp electric and water. There’s a dump station, but we didn’t need it.

The park has multiple ball diamonds, multiple picnic shelters, plenty of scattered picnic tables, and loads of playground equipment.

Read the plaque below and you’ll learn about how this site was actually a stopover for Lewis & Clark.

Historical Marker at Elk Point City Park
Kathy enjoying the playground at Elk Point

After Elk Point, we moved on and arrived at Spearfish South Dakota where we enjoyed meeting up with friends Matt and Sherry, Jim and Brenda, and Paul and Chris (who we spent a couple days with in Mason City Iowa) and they stopped by on their way to Rapid City. The next day David and Susan came on up from Custer State Park where they were volunteering to join us all for the day.

Spearfish, as you might recall is the town where some of us volunteered at DC Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery a couple years ago. It was good to see the recently re-painted fish car!

It was great to spend the evening around the campfire at Volunteer Village again
  • Enjoying dinner at the Farmhouse
  • Jim & Brenda’s rig
  • The DC Booth Fish Car
  • Campers having a birthday party
  • These types of campers are becoming more popular
  • An early RV

While at Spearfish, I noticed a small leak under the coach. It was coming from the “wet bay”, where the waste tanks (and the drain pipe) are located. Further inspection showed that the 3″ pipe coming out of the black tank had a very small leak at one of the fittings. I could see (once I got down on my hands and knees) that this joint had been repaired before by the previous owner.

We were fortunate in that a RV repair shop was just up the road in Belle Fourche (pronounced “Bell Foosh”). I called them, explained our plight that we were full-time RV’ers and were planning to head out tomorrow to Fort Peck Montana for a few days. They had us bring it right on in.

Jim the owner came on out and looked over the situation, assured us he had the necessary fittings and could get us back on the road in a couple hours. He did a great job, I was right by his side and we had some great conversation while he was doing the repair. It ended up he took out all the old, and provided new fittings and a new elbow and we were out of there and back to Spearfish before noon that day.

  • Bottom of the black tank with the leaking fitting (caulked previously)
  • Outside the shop
  • The drain elbow with the black tank fitting removed
  • Smiling customer Herb with Progress RV owner Jim

After about a week, we traveled north back up to Fort Peck Montana and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers campground we had volunteered at in 2019. We wanted to check in on the two rangers we had worked for while we were there.

On the way, we stopped for an overnight stay at Miles City Montana. We were going to stay at the local Elks Lodge, but it was in a noisy downtown district right along a truck route and we were fortunate to stumble across the local county fairgrounds. We had a very quiet and restful evening parked alongside the ag building.

The next morning we found a great little coffee shop downtown where we got our morning boost (and a little something sweet too!)

  • Our spot in the fairgrounds
  • The old train station Miles City MT
  • The Ugly Mug Coffee Shop
  • Apple Crunch Danish (we shared this one)
  • Inside the shop

After our morning boost we visited the Range Riders Museum right across the street from the fairgrounds. I have never been in a museum with such a wide range of collections. It was great to talk to the ladies up front and find out a little about the “Range Riders”. These were ranchers and cowboys who worked their livestock on the open range (no fences).

The museum was founded in the 1930’s and still operates with mostly volunteers. Although I took tons of pictures while visiting, I now find they have a great web site with a lot of great information about the museum. I invite you to take a few minutes and explore the Range Riders Museum to learn about a lost way of life in western America.

If you’d like to see my photos, you can follow this link to my Google Photos album of the museum.

From Miles City we made it the rest of the way up to Fort Peck for a couple days. Check out the picture below that shows the final result of one of the volunteers who made the little camper lending library.

It was good to visit with both Ranger Scott and Ranger Sue again. Since the Interpretive Center is a federal building, masks are required. Scott is in charge of the campground and Sue is responsible for the Interpretive Center. To see more of our time at Fort Peck back in 2019 you can follow this link.

  • Our site at Fort Peck Dam Campground
  • Kathy at the free library
  • Close up of the library
  • Ranger Scott
  • Ranger Sue @ the Interpretive Center

There’s more … but I’ll save that for another time. Thanks for riding along, hope I didn’t bore you too much. I know I can get a little wordy and I’ll work on the next post to cut out some of the details.

Thanks again.

Herb & Kathy (currently at Angostura Recreation Area – Hot Springs SD)

Camp Hosting at Fort Peck, Montana

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Camping, Learning, Sightseeing, Traveling, Working

Kathy and I spent early spring 2019 as Camp Hosts at the Fort Peck Downstream Campground – Fort Peck Montana. This is a U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) Project and our campground is just one of the recreation areas at the project which includes Fort Peck Reservoir, Fort Peck Dam and spillway, the Interpretive & Visitor Center and about a dozen other outlying recreation centers that are along the shores of the 135 mile long reservoir where visitors can use the boat ramps, picnic shelters, and camping areas.

Fort Peck Lake Montana

Campground hosts volunteer 24 hours per week to the park in exchange for their camp site and utilities. There are paid Gate Attendants to handle camper fee collection and the park has contractors who; cut the grass, clean out fire pits, and keep the restrooms and bath houses clean.

Our job as hosts are to be another set of eyes on the park when the ranger can’t be here. There are four rangers here at Fort Peck Project who are responsible for about a dozen outlying recreation areas and the Interpretive Center, so they’ve got plenty to keep them busy.

I’ve gathered some pictures to help illustrate what sorts of things we get involved in. Some of these are things we’ve been asked to do while many of these are things we’ve volunteered to do just to help out and to keep us busy.

  • We cleaned the inside of the Gate House
  • Kathy helps with a school group at the Interpretive Center
  • We raked leaves near the Gate House
  • We removed all the old flyers and posters and washed down the information kiosk
  • We emptied, swept, and organized the recreation shed filled with fishing poles, life vests, balls, bats, horseshoes, and lots more
  • We assembled 400 “Goodie Bags” for the elementary school field trips
  • We repaired Invertebrate “Viewing Cups” that had been damaged during previous field trips
  • We used the Mule to collect downed tree limbs after the winter storms
  • We removed old broken site number posts
  • And replaced them with new posts
  • Have chainsaw, will cut firewood
  • Helping Ranger Sue install a dock in the Donut Pond
  • After installing the dock at the donut pond
  • We pulled all the utility flags after the comfort station construction was completed
  • Kathy and I prepared the electric boats to take over to the pond for the field day kids to use

There’s lots to do here, and lots of “pieces parts” and equipment to do it with. The challenge is having enough staff to get it all done before the onslaught of visitors each spring. That’s where volunteers can help out. We can do the “little jobs” that might otherwise require time from the (4) rangers and (2) maintenance personnel on staff here at the project. That way these folks can utilize their time more wisely doing the types of jobs that their specialized training allows them to do.

One example of the specialized training I mentioned is shown in the photos below. Last year the campground received a new comfort station. The staff here at the project performed the complete operation. They poured the concrete pad for the comfort station to sit on, they did all the trenching and back fill for the supply lines, they did all the rough in plumbing and electrical, they’ll be doing all the final connections, and they will set forms and pour all the concrete curtain and approach walks.

  • Trenching for the power lines to the new bath house
  • Trenching for both power and water lines
  • New Comfort Station w/ private showers
  • Setting the form for concrete to support the electrical transformer
  • Setting the form for an electrical sectionalizer
  • Just some of the equipment these guys use to get the job done
  • Scott on the back hoe
  • Hooking up the power
  • Just one of the typical mundane maintenance jobs

We enjoyed our time at Fort Peck. The folks we worked with and for were very kind, professional, and courteous and they appreciated everything we did to help out.

We also made some great new friends. Dan and Bev came in early May and were contracted as the paid Gate Attendants. They’ve been full time RV’ers for 21 years!

Our new friends Dan and Bev Foster

If you have any interest in working as a volunteer in exchange for your RV site and utilities, go to www.volunteer.gov where you can search by; state, agency, and position type.

Thanks for following along and remember to visit our You Tube channel herbnkathyrv to see some of the videos we’ve published lately.

So Just What Is Fort Peck?

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Camping, Learning, Sightseeing, Traveling, Working

Fort Peck – It’s a small town (about 250 residents) and it’s an Army Corp of Engineers “Project” that includes a dam, a campground, an Interpretive Center, and multiple fishing/boating/hunting recreation areas.

Oh, and I almost forgot … the reason all of the above is here … the Fort Peck Reservoir. The reservoir (man made lake) was formed from the Missouri River, is 135 miles long and has over 1500 miles of shoreline. It was formed in the 30’s when 10,000+ men built the world’s largest earthen dam to provide flood control for lands downstream.

The dam and the history of how families came from all over the country to work there and the engineering that went into the planning and building … well that’s a story in itself and will require a blog post dedicated to that subject alone. But you can learn all about that right now by following this link to PBS Montana.

For now, we want to share with you a little about why we are here, how we came to find this job in particular, and take you on a tour of the park and show you some of our duties here.

Kathy and I are volunteers … well, kind of. We travel the country volunteering our time at campgrounds and RV parks in exchange for the rent and utilities on our site. We generally provide the park 12-15 hours a week and they give us a full hook-up (elec, water, sewer) site along with utilities. Sometimes we also receive; laundry money, free WiFi and cable TV hook-up, and discounts on purchases from the camp store or nearby attractions.

This arrangement offers us an opportunity to travel and see the country, meet all kinds of wonderful new people and experience new situations in all kinds of environments that we otherwise would not be able to see and do on our limited budget.

It offers the campground owner/operator free part-time employees for no cash outlay, only the loss of rental income for a couple RV sites that might often be vacant anyway. Another benefit: typically there is no employment contract or agreement to sign – only a handshake agreement. It’s called bartering. And it works well for us and the campground owner.

How we came to show up here ..

We knew that part of our “Bucket List” included a lot of the national parks and monuments out west, so we decided we’d search for jobs in that area.

Although we subscribe, either for a small annual fee or sometimes for free, to many of the Workamping web sites and have our resume’ published on a lot of them, there is also another great source for finding government related jobs and volunteer positions. I logged on to Volunteer.gov and followed the easy instructions to search for Campground Host (volunteer) positions available in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. I filled out the online application and with just a few mouse clicks submitted our app to probably 40 or so parks in that five state area.

Within a week or two we started getting emails and phone calls from campground managers and rangers throughout the 5 state area. We chose to come to Fort Peck because we were already committed to South Dakota for July, August, and September and Ranger Scott here at Fort Peck was willing to work with our schedule. We left our leased RV lot in Casa Grande Arizona on April 1st and showed up at Fort Peck on April 15 just after the snow melted.

It’s been fascinating to learn about the local history. The town of Fort Peck was built by the corp to support the nearly 50,000 people that would come here to work on the building of the dam over the 10+ year period of 1930 to 1941. There were as many as 11,000 men working on the dam at any one time during that period and eight men lost their lives during “the Big Slide” of 1938 and are permanently entombed in the dam to this day.

To learn more about the dam building and how the town and local area and people from far and wide prospered during the depression, I encourage you to follow this link to visit the PBS web site with some great pictures from the era and a video about the building of the dam.

Our Camp Host Site on day one – April 15th
The theatre operated 24/7 during construction of the dam with newsreels, movies and live plays to entertain the workers and their families and still offers summer plays to locals and visitors to the area.
The Northeast Montana Veterans Memorial Park in the center of town
The world’s largest earthen dam, 4 miles long, 3/4 mile wide at the base, and 250′ tall.
The Spillway located 3 miles east of the dam. Yes, that’s ice on the downstream side
The Interpretive Center contains displays information on the dam, local paleontology, and local fish and wildlife along with an educational movie theatre

There was a T-Rex discovered here (now on display at the Smithsonian) with a full-size replica here in the Interpretive Center.

The Fort Peck T-Rex in the Interpretive Center

Here’s a video that gives a tour of the campground and some of the surrounding area along with a little bit of what we’ve been doing at the park these first couple of weeks.

10 minute video on the Downstream Campground – Fort Peck Montana

Thanks for riding along and visiting. We’re having fun and intend to keep posting to share a little of our time here. Please leave any comments below and be sure to subscribe to our You Tube channel so you always get the latest videos as soon as they are published. I usually try to make the videos available here via the blog as well.

Until next time, best wishes to you and yours from HerbnKathy