the feckless father: 2013 Missouri Vacation

Earlier this summer, Herself came out of the house while I'm building the fence around the "back 40" and tells me she wants a pop up camper so that we can go camping. She makes a convincing argument; togetherness time for our "tween" girls and younger boys, and both of us really feeling like we have this really brief window in time with these kids- and that window was wide open, but wouldn't be for long. (Since this conversation we have really had some paradigm shifts in parenting- maybe more on that later) Herself thought that camping trips would be a good way of doing that. Neither of us are wild about sleeping on the ground or a tent, so that is what I wound up getting. An older, used Pop-up camper.

So, we left Sunday morning and headed to The Lake of the Ozarks for a little summer vacation. We had never been before; Herself, of course, did her usual vast amount of research and preparation, ready to eat meals, agenda, itinerary, scheduling, etc, etc. So maybe I feel a little guilty about it, but my preparations involving this vacation can be boiled down to this: I bought the camper, then I hooked up to the camper when it was time to leave. Oh, and yeah, I carried some stuff to the truck... It is such a blessing to be married to a VERY well organized person! We lacked nothing, save her camera, which seems to be her only Achilles Heel. So all camera shots are with phone camera. (It always makes mad to not have her camera)

Anyway, we made it safely with camper trailer to Lake of the Ozarks State Park, on the East and southish side of the lake. If you haven't ever seen it, Google it, its kind of amazing. Of course it isn't natural, it was a river dammed up in the late 20's, covering up and destroying dozens of tiny towns, and according to one local, 720 different cemeteries. It powers a hydro electric plant, so of course we had to go check that out!

It wasn't all just field trip for daddy, though. We did fun stuff for everybody. We visited some amazing Ozark caverns, (couldn't take our camera in; dumb bats!) We did some shopping at some tourist traps,

and we went to a movie (at the theater!!!) Monster's University, the prequel to Monsters inc.

And of course, we did a lot of swimming, the water was great! refreshing but not too cold.

And we spend a lot of time at the camp, cooking, eating, etc.

One other high-light was we went over these 2 "swinging bridges". They were really old; the first one was made with 2x6's with 1x12's laid down where the tires were supposed to go. It was really scary and intense, I told the kids that I wouldn't have done that in any other country but the USA, as it looked totally unreliable. It was also quite noisy; the growling and groaning of the boards was quite disconcerting. The second one was way worse; it was shorter and gave the appearance of looking stouter. As I began to drive across it, I said "oh, this one is steel structured", but nope! It just had roofing panels laid perpendicularly across it! That one really popped and squawked!! It was soo loud outside the truck, but inside? Deathly quiet!!

That was our trip in a nutshell. It was a quick one, and it does seem like it was quite abbreviated, but I need to ease into these changes slowly. I don't get off the farmlet very often, and its kind of hard to get away from my livestock.

Here are some more random pictures: