Finger Lakes State Park Columbia, MO 08.18.17

Finger Lakes State Park is located just north of Columbia, MO, and has a lovely small campground. It also happened to be in the path of totality for the full Solar Eclipse! We booked months in  advanced and got the last two campsites!

A view of our campsite. As you can see, the campground had lots of mature trees, so plenty of shade. Good thing too, because summers in Missouri are hot and muggy, and while the T@b's air conditioning did great at night, we like to spend our days outside!

A couple more views of our set up:

Lots of privacy, and a fairly big campsite. Fred and Lucy take their posts by the road to greet visitors. Next door, Jeff and Kathy set up the Scamp.

We used this huge area between the two sites to set up their canopy where we spent lots of time, sitting and watching the world go by. This is something we've become very good at doing.

This trip was about the solar eclipse, but we were excited for a whole different reason!

Time for a new state sticker on the map! Andy did the honors.

We can't believe it took us a year to get to Missouri to camp, but here we are, filling in that hole in the Midwest states.

Missouri became our 12th state! Yay, us!

Now, about this eclipse thing. We may have gone a little overboard. I named it "eclipsalypse" since it was such a big deal nationwide. We even had a news crew come interview us, we bought lots of eclipse type things, and made eclipse jokes. Let's see what we've got.

First of all, we have our super awesome eclipse glasses, made from a PopTart wrapper and Jeff's regular glasses.

Nah, just teasing. Was funny though...

Jeff had purchased us legitimate solar eclipse watching glasses so we wouldn't go blind. That was nice of him.

We made sure to have the proper gum to chew while watching the eclipse. Jeff even tried to do tricks with it!

Also didn't go well, but at least his breath was minty fresh!

So, seriously, local news stopped by reaaaaallly early in the morning, and Andy was the only one up when they came through, so they asked if they could interview him. He had bed head and was still in the process of making coffee, so he said if they'd come back later, one of our group, at least, would be up for an interview.

We chose Jeff. Jeff was really into the eclipsalypse, so we decided he should be group spokesperson. I took a screenshot of the video I took of him being interviewed. I couldn't show you the video because Jeff was fine with the TV interview, but didn't much care for me documenting it, and there may have been an off-camera gesture to let me know. 😀

We had one more goofy idea that actually turned out really cool. Watch the video below to see how we taught people all over the world about what happens during a solar eclipse:

Hahahahahaaaa! Don't worry. All beer was consumed by the end of our trip.

One of our biggest concerns about Eclipse Day was cloud cover. We couldn't control the weather, we had planned to be in this spot for at least six months, so it's not like we were going anywhere, we just had to hope for the best.

The day was cloudy, but several campers gathered in a grassy spot at the center of the campground to try to see as much of the eclipse as we could. News sites around the globe predicted tons and tons of people and traffic jams and crowds and other eclipsalypse type problems, but here's what we experienced.

Not too scary, was it? Ha! We socialized with our camping neighbors and enjoyed our setup as we waiting for the event. The excitement building up to it was all part of the fun!

I'm testing my eclipse glasses here, and couldn't see a darn thing! Guess they work!

Some of the kids from the campground lit up these cool neon spheres. As the day got darker, (it was like the sun was setting) these would glow brightly, and they even spun in the breeze. I took video:

We were getting close to the main event, and the crowd gathered voiced their concerns that the cloud cover had thickened, and we wouldn't be able to see the corona. The moment we had been waiting for suddenly looked anticlimactic. Bummer!

But wait! Remember, since we were in the path of totality, there was over two minutes where we would be able to see the total eclipse. At the last thirty seconds or so, the clouds moved and WE SAW THE CORONA!!

Hahaha! Just kidding. I joke. It's what I do. We really did get to see it though, look!

It's not the best picture, certainly, but it was taken with my phone as I stared up at this cool moment of science! The crowd cheered! It was like we all were connected by something, if just for one brief moment. The whole experience was wonderful, and I would absolutely do it again!

When the main event was over, most campers hopped in their rigs and joined the eclipsalypse traffic to go home. Not us! We planned ahead and had the whole day to ourselves at the campground. Unfortunately, it rained on and off that night, so we spent a lot of time in our separate campers, but we enjoyed wrapping up the trip with Jeff and Kathy.

Happy camping!
Peggy

Black Hawk State Park, The Return 08.04.17

We knew we'd have to come back. Last year, we reserved a lake front spot, having no idea what to expect once we got there, and wow. Did we ever find a gem! This trip, we tried to book a site, but all the reservable lake front spots were taken. There were 3 walk-up only sites available, so we took a chance! (For the record, as I've mentioned in past posts, I HATE walk-up spots. I want to know that I'll have a place to stay once we arrive.) Anyway, this time it worked out, and the B@r T@b had a lovely spot for the weekend.

Just steps from the water! How pretty is that?

Fred and Lucy came too, and we turned the T@b sideways to maximize our privacy and view of the lake.

Within minutes of us pulling into the spot, our camping neighbor came over to check out our little camper. He was an older gentleman, who currently owned a popup camper, and had trouble setting it up by himself. He saw how easily I was able to do much of the setup, and he thought it was worth looking into. We spent a lot of time this weekend talking to him about it, showing off some of our favorite features, and I even found a dealer in Omaha that had some in stock! By Saturday afternoon, he had an appointment with that dealer the following Monday to look at the camper! I hope he bought it and loves it like we love ours.

It wasn't all socializing this weekend. We spent a good amount of time sitting and staring at the lake and enjoying a campfire.

As always, we made yummy meals. This one was Greek chicken. Grilled chicken breasts with Greek seasoning, couscous, and a salad made from tomato, red onion, cucumbers, dill, Greek yogurt, and feta cheese. Give it a go! It was delicious, and most of it was made ahead of time to cut down on prep work at the campsite.

Sunsets on the lake. I like those! This was quite pretty, and shows what a calm evening we were having.

I finished the night with wine and campfire. Not too shabby of a way to spend some time.

Saturday, we drove to Carroll, IA to Santa Maria Winery. It was a lovely spot with an awesome bar for tasting!

I have dreams of making a smaller version of a bar like this in our dining room at home. It was really pretty!

My wine flight. I tried mostly whites and a red that intrigued me.

Andy's tastings were two reds and two whites. The huge wine glasses lined up on the table made us look like we were drinking a lot more than we were. No, honest! Anyway, we made a couple of purchases and went back to the campsite.

Once back, we went for a walk, just to see what was there. There are several buildings at the park that were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, including the picnic shelter.

Yes, I brought my wine on the walk. :) This fireplace was huge and gorgeous, so I wanted a picture. I walked up next to it, and noticed...a noise. It was a noise that I wasn't familiar with, but had enough sense to figure out that our voices echoing as we talked in the shelter had roused the bats sleeping in the chimney. I told Andy to get the pic QUICK so I could get away from the fireplace before they all started swooshing out! The hubbub was intense enough that I knew we were talking dozens, if not hundreds, of bats. 😨

Leaving bat-free, we continued our walk. We stopped and chatted with a couple who had seen our T@b parked down on the water and wanted to talk about it. While we described the camper, their granddaughter rode up on her bike, and after listening to us talk about our tiny camper said, "You should see the big camper parked at the end! It's so big, the slideout has FIVE WINDOWS!"

"Really?" I replied. Five windows seemed like an exaggeration, but we decided to go see for ourselves. Guess what?

FIVE WINDOWS!

This thing was massive. I'm telling you, I wish we could have parked the T@b next to it, just to compare! It would have been funny! Nobody was home, so we didn't have the opportunity to talk and compare camping experiences, but judging my the number of bicycles in their site, they had several people in their party, and probably needed a big camper. Anyway, it was entertaining.

Back at the campsite, we chilled by the fire and hooked up the lights on the T@b.

It was a chilly evening for August, as you may have guessed, but quite lovely for camping and fire sits.

Sunday morning, I got up for sunrise, and I was not disappointed!

Aside from one neighbor, I was the only one up and out that morning. What a beautiful and peaceful way to start the day.

When Andy got up, we continued our beautiful start to the day with breakfast and mimosas! We used this grapefruit prosecco from Trader Joe's, and it might be the best mimosa I've ever had. 10 out of 10 would recommend!

We took some time to walk the Sauk Rail Trail as well before heading home.

As far as scenery, it never really changed. There was a more rugged dirt trail we could have taken that would have been more visually appealing, but we didn't know that when we started out, so we continued down this long, straight, paved tunnel of trees. It was pleasant, and when we started out, not busy at all, but action picked up when we were on our way back.

Walked about a mile and a half, decided to turn back at that point.

On our next trip here (we will come back!) we are planning on bringing bikes to ride this trail and go a bit farther, now that we know what it's like.

Two thumbs up for our whole weekend. It was just what we needed!

Happy camping!
Peggy

McIntosh Woods State Park- This Time With Friends! 07.28.17

McIntosh Woods State Park is just a hop and a skip away from us, and as it turns out, is about the exact same distance for Jeff and Kathy, so we had an impromptu visit there in late July.

Our setup is getting a little more complex. LOL! But when I saw this cute little flag at Blossoming Creations, a local store, you know I had to have it!

So it joins our B@r T@b sign and flamingos, welcoming people to our campsite. It's fun!

Jeff and Kathy had a cool campsite next door, and Jeff and Andy had some fun finding places to relax.

Andy found a couple of trees that were perfect for his hammock.

Here's Jeff's idea for an area to sit back and relax. What could possibly go wrong?

Fortunately, he managed to sit for a while without even falling off the stump! It was pure luck, in case you were wondering.

Kathy and I decided not to sit and watch them sit, so we went for a nice walk. We found Smokey the Bear!

(He wasn't really that scary.) And there was also just some very pretty scenery along the trail.

Willem DeGnome came along, too. He rides with the Scamp.

We also took a side trip to Lake Time Brewery, our favorite spot, located in Clear Lake, IA. We ordered lots of tasty brews, and even took a few to go!

While it wasn't the most exciting trip, we enjoyed relaxing with friends, and we love being able to take the T@b places and use it!

Happy camping!
Peggy