1994 Brave 29RQ RV: Broken Arrow Campground

Wyoming, being the wild west that it is, has state parks with campgrounds just here and there. It is much like camping at dispersed sites in the national forest. You just drive along, see a fire ring or picnic table with a place to park and stop. But we were headed to an official campground called Broken Arrow so we passed by many potential places. When we got there the very widely spaces sites were unoccupied. As we drove it we saw one last car leaving. We had the place to ourselves. We picked a great, level site on the beach.

Our perfect campsite.

A view to the left.

A view to the right.

The view out to the water.

Our RV through the trees.

Many of the trees were out in the water.

We really wanted a view out across the reservoir and we got it.

Our picnic table.

This looks interesting says Blossom.


Blossom exploring in the trees.

Our private beach at our private campground on a private peninsula.

I'm a real stickler for having my dogs on leash. Blossom the light colored larger dog has excellent recall.

With no one else in the campground and it being on a peninsula we let the dog off leash.

She is a trained agility dog and when she is off leash she is working. When I swatted a bug and said 'a bug' she looked at me to see if I was giving her a command and if there was something she was supposed to be doing. Being off leash made her very uncomfortable at first because she pays strict attention to me and pretty much stays at my side. I called her off a mouse and squirrel she wanted to chase with no problem. But I wasn't comfortable with her recall if she should see a deer so we kept a sharp eye out toward the grassy field at the entrance to the campground. Eventually she loosened up and played with her ball, our other dog and went swimming to chase the tennis ball. Then disaster happened. The two dogs were chasing each other and she took off out of the trees toward the grassy field and the entrance to the campground. I shouted at her and called her back as I could only see the top of her head receding in the distance and barely see they boy at all because of the high grass. She stopped on a dime turned around, looked at me, and then bolted in my direction. I cheered and complimented her as she raced my way with our boy dog running behind. She ran straight passed me to the metal wire pen, got inside and did an executive sit. Phew, all that recall work paid off. We complimented her up a storm and she soaked it all up because she knew she did well. The boy who was chasing just stood outside the pen wondering what all the fuss was.

What do we do with all this freedom???

Letting the boy off leash was a questionable decision. He has what we can only think of as post traumatic stress syndrome from a bad hoarding situation and sometimes seems to not recognize or trust us. So when we let him off leash I told him, this was his chance. If he wanted to get away from us now was the opportunity. He sort of wandered away and when he got to a set distance I called him back and he came. We did this a number of times but he was quite determined to visit the fish skeleton on one shore and when I called him back from there he came! The girl came also as she loves her compliments. I don't trust that he has any type of reliable recall but was pleased he didn't run away and hide as he as done in the past when he got loose. He also seemed a little surprised to be off leash and wasn't sure how to handle it but eventually loosened up.