To read about our prior visit to Brushy Creek, click here.

As you can see from the picture, we camped at the North Equestrian campgrounds, which means we were surrounded by horses even though we had none.  I love the smell of horses (weird, right?) so it was quite a treat to get to be around them, and since I haven’t had a chance to just observe horses, it was fun to just watch how they act.  I learned a lot, like how upset they were if one horse left the other one alone.  Also I found it curious that they just stand all the time and never lay down like I expected.  Aren’t they just beautiful!?  Brushy Creek may be the only place where you camp with your horses in Iowa, or if not, it’s definitely the largest.

The North Equestrian Campgrounds is made up of small circles radiating off, like spokes on a bicycle, the big circle.  I was at camp 16 so just a couple of small lanes into the large circle, I turned off onto a small lane that circled around a small green, grassy area.  Right in the center there was a water pump for all campers on that particular circle to use.  It really made for nice roomy campsites, but none of the campsites had electricity if you are looking for that.

My husband is a mail carrier so he has to work six days out of seven, so when he gets two days off such as Memorial Day, I try to find somewhere to camp even though that is the busiest time for campgrounds.  After visiting Brushy Creek last year at the end of the season (link here), we had always planned to return. With it being a no-wake lake, I knew we wouldn’t have to worry about all the power boats blowing us off the Lake or disturbing our fishing.  It was a perfect decision because we had a very roomy campsite, so even though the campgrounds were full, we really didn’t have to worry about the neighbors.  Our neighbors on the right side of us had two horses, Trigger and Raz, (above photo) that I watched whenever I got a chance to relax in the lawn chair.

I headed out Friday alone to meet up with my son and his wife, and I’m extremely proud of the fact I managed to get most of my tent up on my own before my son showed up!  It was a bit embarrassing, though, to be a lone person setting up a 6-man tent!  Hubby didn’t join us until Sat. night after work, which turned out to be better weather days anyway.  Friday night we managed to enjoy a fire and get in a s’more before the heavy rain started in.  It was fun to watch the storm come in and count the seconds between lightning and thunder, and we were ready to run to our tents when the first few big plops of rain hit us.

Saturday the forecast was for 90-degree weather and instead we woke up to very cold, windy weather.  It stayed overcast and spit rain here and there most of the day.  Everyone I met in the campgrounds couldn’t believe it and kept looking up at the skies in bewilderment.  The hot weather did arrive on Sunday full force, and that was when I went on my bike ride, of course.  I’ll blog about that next week. (here)  My husband and son got some fishing in and quickly filled their limit of bluegills in just a few hours.

Meanwhile, my daughter-in-law and I were looking forward to cooling off at the beach.  From a distance it looked like such a big sandy area and very inviting.  However, when we walked down to it, all we could see is goose poop everywhere!  We couldn’t even find a place to lay out our towel without hitting some.  Shrugging that off because we were so hot, we headed for the water which was definitely nice and cool.  However, it was very shallow for quite a ways out and very gunky with vegetation and muddy bottom.  We left right after getting as cooled off as possible and decided a cold shower would work much better for us!

Our last day there, of course, was the most beautiful out, so hubby and son went out fishing one last morning focusing on bass and walleye.  I’ll leave you with a picture of hubby and his fish.  The picture also highlights why it’s called Brushy Creek with all the trees in the water!