After leaving the Nauvoo area, we headed for Missouri. Terry's mom was born in Gallatin, MO, so we considered going that way. But, it would have added an additional 300 miles to our trip, so we decided to just head to our next ROD park. The Ozark Mountains cover a large part of Missouri. They are just "big hills" in comparison to the mountains in the West--the highest elevation a little over 2700 feet. But, it is a lot different county compared to Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. There are a lot of trees, but not many pine trees.
Our park was really nice. It is surrounded by several small towns, the closest being about 15 miles away, but it does have a small Walmart!
The park is quite hilly, but we got a spot at the bottom of a tree-less, grassy hill on one side, and the forest on the other. There are several sections to the park, which would have been really nice for bike riding, but some of the hills were too much for us in most of the other areas.
On the property there is this catfish pond, which they regularly stocked, and two other really pretty lakes. You can fish in them without a fishing license and there was no park fishing fee, either. This little pond usually had fishermen around it. We are still not big fans of eating catfish!
This lake is the closest to a small dam. It is very nice and has a bike trail around half of it, which we rode. They have canoes, row boats, and paddle boats you can rent. There is a dock out in the swimming area with a slide on it. There were a few people using these facilities on the weekends.
This was the closest lake to our campsite. Terry didn't bring his fishing pole with us this year because out-of-state fishing licenses are usually quite spendy. So, he had to go into Walmart and get an inexpensive pole and try his luck. He didn't have any luck, but we had a nice time.
This resort has a large, beautiful lodge. It is just being re-built from burning down from a fire a year ago. It will be really nice when they get it done. They also have in indoor aquatics center with two pools and a hot tub. They have an large outdoor pool (which they closed after Memorial Day.) There is a small store and snack bar and a restaurant that has meals on the weekends (since Memorial Day.) Their sports center burnt down a few months before the clubhouse. They just opened the new Lake Expo building five months ago. It is beautiful. It is two stories, with a large event room, smaller meeting rooms, miniature golf, basketball court, arcade room, shuffleboard, and more on the bottom floor. On the top floor they have a fitness room, a Marilyn Monroe meeting room, a lounge, a spa where you can get massages, etc., and a theater that is as big as the one in Emmett! They will show a movie every 2-3 hours during the day and evening. If the slot is not filled, you can request a movie and if they have it, you can see it in the theater! We watched several movies while we were there.
Instead of a trampoline, they have this large rubber, blow-up (they would let all of the air out if it rained because it was really slippery when it got wet) jumping pillow. It was really popular with the kids and adults. We never jumped on it, but it looked like fun.
With one side of our campsite next to the forest, we occasionally saw deer in the area. This one just meandered across the road in front of us one day.
The people in this part of the country is very religious. We have never seen so many churches. There are a lot of denominations--Lutheran, Baptist, Catholic, and others. A lot of the churches are quite small and many have little cemeteries. We never saw any really big community cemeteries--they were all just little ones around a church, or just very small ones along a county road.
The people here are very patriotic. One of the schools put all of these flags out in front of their school on 9/11.
With all of the churches, we still had to travel over 40 miles to find an LDS church to go to on the two Sundays we were there. We went to a ward one Sunday and to a branch the next Sunday. We also got a chance to go to the St. Louis Temple one day. It was only 60 miles away and was beautiful.
Coming home one day from town, we saw a squished turtle on the road. A little further, there was a little one right in the middle of the road. Terry didn't hit it, so we went back and got him. He is a male box turtle (we found that out, thanks to the Internet) and is about the size of my fist. We named him Homer. He is so cute!
We went to Walmart and got him a little "condo." I first put in rocks, dirt, weeds, and a "little pond." But later, I found out that the dirt wasn't good, and the rocks may scratch his shell, and the "pond" rusted. So, I remodeled his condo with shredded paper, a little cardboard "cave" and a plastic pond that wouldn't rust.
The first night we left him outside. The next morning there were muddy paw prints all over the top of Homer's house and all of the pieces of apples and bananas and lettuce were gone. There were also paw prints all over the tablecloth and seat covers of the picnic table. We were glad that Homer had a nice shell to protect himself, because raccoons can make a tasty meal of a little turtle! After that, we took Homer inside each night.
Even after Homer wasn't enticing that little coon to come around, he still walked all over our car each night. We left the window open one night, about an inch, and he was really determined to try and get in because we couldn't even see out of the window for all of the mud on it one morning after it had rained a little. We had to go to the car wash!
I have been telling Terry that he needs to find a hobby. He vetoed needlepoint, but after seeing our nephew's scroll saw, he decided to get one. I gave up half of my Scentsy room and made room for a scroll saw.
Terry doesn't think he is very good yet, but I think he did a great job on his first project--a set of coasters for our little table!
Well, little Homer never really adjusted to his new home. We had him for five days and he hadn't eaten anything. Even though they can go two weeks without eating, we didn't want him to go into hibernation mode (from the Internet), so we decided he would be happier back in the wild.
We turned him loose down by the lake. Here he is giving us a good-bye look! We will miss him!
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