![\"Pushing](\"http:\/\/www.forestcamping.com\/dow\/suzi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/pushing-cows.jpg\" "\\"Pushing-cows\\"")
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“Pushing cows ain’t easy like the movies said” from Garth Brooks’ songThe first thing is the topography of Thunder Basin National Grassland.\u00a0 It has a rolling landscape with huge grass covered swells and an occasional cluster of trees, mainly cottonwoods.\u00a0 The Black Hills NF is almost all vertical with pines and spruce growing out of the most impractical places.\u00a0 You can hear the wind coming in the Black Hills but on the grassland it is so quiet you can hear cars and trucks miles away and long before you see them.\u00a0 (One morning I thought I heard the Man-on-the-moon sneeze, it was that quiet!)<\/p>\n
Thunder Basin is a grassland (actually composed of “mixed short grasses”) so you expect to see grass but there is so much and so tall.\u00a0 The cows could hide in it.\u00a0 Wonder if that\u2019s why the cattle we saw was either black or chestnut brown – so the rancher\/cowboy could see them in the tall golden grass.<\/p>\n
Management of the grasslands is much younger than management of the forests and I think they have used \u201clessons learned\u201d from the forest to the grasslands.\u00a0 The Black Hills National Forest was original designated a \u201ctimber reserve\u201d early in the 20th century.\u00a0 National grasslands were acquired after the Dust Bowl days from farmers and ranchers who couldn\u2019t survive on the damaged land.\u00a0 Now those same lands are healthy and productive, as is evident from the lush vegetation and devise ways the land is being used.<\/p>\n
The Black Hills National Forest enjoys tons visitors from across the country and the world.\u00a0 Thunder Basin National Grasslands, like most grasslands, isn\u2019t well-known to most people beyond the grasslands borders and offers campers much of what a disperse camper might want in a national forest, just without as many trees and far fewer visitors.<\/p>\n