Oakwood Lakes State Park - Brookings, South Dakota

 

The park is right next to a lake. They rent kayaks, but the office is closed during the week.

There is an RV dump at the park entrance which is very easy to access and use.

We were the only ones in the equestrian campground. There are several campsites throughout the park. All the campsites have electrical and some are even full hook-up, but horse people get nada - no hook-ups and a single water pump at the campground entrance.

On the plus side, there is a large arena with grass. Since we were the only campers, we used the arena instead of the corrals so the horses had plenty of space and could graze.

On the negative side, it appears that bot flies have laid eggs in my horse's mane. They are really really hard to remove. I de-wormed both horses as a precaution. It takes 3-10 days for the eggs to hatch into maggots, so I have a couple of days to figure out how to get the eggs out of his mane.

There are swarms of mosquitoes and flies. I expect the lake is the reason for all the mosquitoes.

We can't go outside without heavily spraying ourselves. We put fly sheets on both horses to protect them.

We drove around the park to see some of the sites...too many mosquitoes to walk.

The burial mounds are just large grassy hills.

There is an old well-chinked log cabin that was built by a trapper over 100 years ago.

We did manage one ride around the lake. The trails are well maintained and pretty, but the insects were just awful.