Saturday, March 13, 2010 - Travel to Shockaloe, Bienville National Forest

Though we were alone when we arrived at Gum Springs, several folks came in overnight, and more arrived in the morning. Then a ranger came by to tell us they were doing a prescribed burn near part of the trail, so in the end, we were glad we weren't staying anyway. Proof positive that everything works out in the end, if you just stick it out long enough! I just hope the same is true with my new computer, which is still defying my will. Managed to get online at one stop and check my email through the Web, but I'm no further ahead trying to get my phone to work as a broadband modem, or install my printer driver, or load up my ancient bookkeeping program (which installs on DOS, would you believe, and I can't even find the command prompt yet!) Not a happy camper right now, wondering if I can scrap Windows 7 and reinstall XP somehow.
But just when one thing seems impossible, something else comes along to add to the challenge. We arrived at Bienville National Forest (I was going on memory at this point, vaguely remembering where camps were from all my prep work. After all, my computer crashed last October and I had to do an entire summer's worth of the same work over again, so some of it stuck.) I had looked it up again on the website before we headed out, and confirmed that Base Camp I was closed until April, but BC II was open all year, so that's where we were headed. We stopped in a small town on the way that had wireless signal, and I sat in a gas station convenience store for two hours trying to get this stupid computer going, but the signal was so slow I had to give up, having gained nothing but more frustration, and a greater determination to somehow get XP on this machine.
We arrived at BC II, only to discover a yellow tape across the entrance, in front of a pile of huge limbs, and the camp looked like it had been hit by a tornado (which apparently, it had, but we don't know when). Trees were down, the gateway was impassable, as was the loop around the campground. It was nearing darking, and we were stuck. What to do, what to do? Well, once again, not to let a few measly challenges get in our way, we noticed a Water Management Deer Checking station right next door, with an open gate and a parking area sufficient for me to turn the big rig around. Being a Saturday, there was no one around, but there was a red pickup parked off to one side. We pulled in and parked, then dicovered a water spigot, and later, an electrical outlet! We made ourselves at home in short order. As we were doing so, the owner of the red pickup arrived, all decked out in hunting gear, having come back from a turkey expedition (empty-handed). He confirmed that he'd never seen the gate locked anyway, he didn't work there, he just parked there to go hunting, and no one was likely to care that we spent the night there (as if we had a choice at that point, dusk had arrived). We went to bed, relieved that we had once again overcome the obstacles placed before us. Now if I could only get this bloody computer to work!