Lake of the Ozarks State Park

Good morning my friends. We're back in Missouri this morning, making our way westward. It was another long day of driving, but we're staying put for the next three days (two now). As we were packing up to leave our spot at Rend Lake yesterday, we were sorry we hadn't planned a longer stay. Sadie was entertained by the birds outside.

Smitty enjoyed the peace and quiet and general lack of woofies while he took his morning nap.

But leave we must, and so we did, heading northwest on I-64 toward St. Louis. It was another good day for barns and ramshackle structures.

Approaching St. Louis, we enjoyed a final view of the Gateway Arch.

Soon, we crossed the Veteran's Bridge over the Mississippi River.

You might remember that we passed under this bridge on our riverboat cruise the day we visited the national park.

But here we go up and over.

On the other side, we entered the state of Missouri for the second time this trip.

And just a few miles down the road, we crossed over the Missouri River. Crossing in both places so close together impressed upon me the reason St. Louis was considered the "Gateway to the West." Sitting at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers made it an important port city. So here we go again...up and over.

There's the river...

Just after passing through St. Louis, we entered the suburb of St. Charles, Missouri. St. Charles was the home of Daniel Boone around 1809. He wanted to be near his grandson who was in boarding school there. It's also the birthplace of Jeanne Shaheen, senator from New Hampshire, and legendary rocker, songwriter, and guitarist, Chuck Berry.

And on we go, heading just about due west now. I captured one more Missouri barn...

And whatever this is.

And we continued our trek westward across Missouri on I-70 until we turned south at Exit 148. And...as if by divine guidance...it happened to be exactly where we needed to be in order to pay Ozarkland another visit. We visited them in Branson, and I was in serious need of more fudge. Fortunately, they had a nice big parking lot, and I was in and out in just a few minutes.

This time I chose (top row, left to right) vanilla, chewy praline, chocolate pecan, and (bottom row, left to right) cookies and cream, lemon meringue, and maple pecan. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

Heading more southwest now, we passed through Missouri's state capital of Jefferson City. We could see the Capitol rotunda as we passed by.

And we crossed the Missouri River again here.

Here we go...

Up and over.

There's the river.

And we had about another 30 miles to reach our final destination.

We had to dump our waste tanks and then fill our fresh water tank, and then we were on a long, winding, and narrow road toward our campsite for the next three nights. Along the way, we caught this deer in someone else's campsite. I barely captured it through the back window of the truck.

This is Missouri's largest state park. Here's the map we were given at the gate. The lake itself has more than 89 miles of shoreline.

This next image is a close-up of the lower right corner of the larger map. Our campsite is where I've indicated with a red dot toward the bottom.

This is the view from our back window.

This is what Sadie sees.

There's a short path that leads out to the lakeshore.

Standing at the water's edge and looking right, it looks like this.

Looking left, it looks like this:

Looking straight across, you can see the same limestone cliffs we were seeing in Kentucky.

Well. Smitty could see this was an excellent place for him to explore. We first tried the tiger-in-the-weeds approach.

And then we had a good munch of that Meowssouri grass. It was lip-smacking good.

Sadie spent her afternoon flaked out in the sunshine on her catio. Everyone was happy.

We relaxed after a long day of driving. As the sun set, this is what we saw:

So we intend to lie like vegetables here. We'll take a few days off to relax. There are some nice hiking trails, and so I expect we'll get in at least one hike. Looking back at that close-up section of the map, we're strongly considering the blue trail that surrounds the campground area.

For now, I want to spend some time on my slow-stitching. I've neglected it for the past several days. We'll probably get Smitty out for another walk or two. We haven't yet tested the lake water to see how cold it is. If it's not too cold, we might go swimming. We'll also check into boat rentals in the area. It might be fun to tootle around the lake a little. The sky's the limit...for two days. 

We're in a nice shady spot, but we worried it would interfere with our Starlink connection. Mike was ready to give up, but we kept trying, and we finally found the sweet spot at the post with our site number. There's a large window through the tree canopy to the sky there, and the Starlink found home fairly quickly. (It's very smart at phoning home.) My hip feels good after two long days of driving, and so I believe my $12 cushion is doing the job.

So that's all I have for you today. I guess we'll just walk around until we bump into something to do. For sure and certain, slow-stitching is next.