A Day for Slow

Good morning, my friends. Happy Mother's Day to all who celebrate. Well, it was a lazy morning yesterday. We were moving slow. The kitties put us in the mood right from the get-go.

I spent a little time on my slow-stitching. I did a little more in the afternoon.

Before I go on, I want to say we've seen several butterflies flit through our campsite. As I've mentioned, it's nearly impossible to get a picture of a butterfly. They rarely light anywhere, and it does no good to chase them down. I found the two pictures I was looking for online. One was the Zebra Swallowtail.

(Image credit: "Zebra Swallowtail, Megan McCarty69" 

by Megan McCarty is licensed under CC BY 3.0.)

The other was a Viceroy.

(Image credit: "Viceroy" by hmclin is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.)

When we couldn't stand our lazy selves any more, we decided to take this hike listed in the brochure we were given when we checked in.

It was a loop that started from the entrance gate and ended there as well.

Here are the ways you could die out here today. 

As for the ticks...did I mention I found a tick on my abdomen a couple of days ago? It didn’t register with me that it was a tick until I’d already pulled it off (it was attached), looked carefully at it, and then flushed it. After flushing it, it dawned on me that it might have been a tick. The tick appeared black, but I couldn’t see any legs or antennae, and it was not enlarged at all from feeding. It was about the size of a tomato seed. I don’t see any tick parts left, but there is a pin-prick hole with redness around it. It's not itchy. In any case, we're being super careful now. We paused here to tuck our pantlegs inside our socks.

Okay, so taking one step, I noticed the first blue blaze. Stick with me my friends. I won't lead you off the path.

It was an easy-enough hike. I took my hiking pole with me, but I didn't need it.

We crossed over these rickety bridges in a couple of places. 

About one-third of the way in, we spotted three white-tail deer. They were shy, and leapt away from us every time they caught sight of us. I was able to zoom in close to get this picture.

Eventually, the trail crossed the road.

We continued on. We were waiting for a view of the lake, as promised by the name of the trail. About halfway in, we saw it.

Eventually, we walked alongside it for a bit.

We saw several of these fox squirrels. They were very quick and went leaping across the fallen leaves.

At our campsite, we've noticed these holes in the ground. Our neighbor in Oregon, who has lived in her house for less than a year, sent us pictures like this as well. They're holes where cicadas emerge from the ground.

When I spotted a few holes along our trail, I started looking for them on the trees. After emerging from the ground, they'll sit for a while before flying off to do cicada things. This year's emergence is special. For the first time since 2015 a 13-year brood is emerging in the same year as a 17-year brood. For the first time since 1998 adjacent 13-and 17-year broods will emerge in the same year. For the first time since 1803 Brood XIX and XIII will co-emerge. It didn't take long before I spotted one of them. 

The Google tells me that the northern brood will emerge in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, and the southern brood will emerge in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. So, this would be one of the southern brood.

We've heard them across the lake from our campsite, and we heard them in certain sections of our hike yesterday. I made a very short video so that you could hear the sound they make. Turn up your volume. If you can't see the video, click right here.

Eventually, we started seeing the limestone walls like we saw in Kentucky and Arkansas. The path took us between that tree with the blue blaze and the wall. It was a narrow space.

Nearing the end of the loop, we saw another white-tailed deer. This one was accustomed to people. He allowed us to get fairly close.

At the end of our hike, we were hot from the humidity, and so we headed back to the campground and enjoyed a Mike's Lemonade while we relaxed for the rest of the day.

I imagine some of you have enjoyed the Northern Lights this past couple of days. We assumed we would be too far south to see it on Friday, and so we didn't even bother looking. So sad. I know people farther south than we are who were able to see it. Our son texted us an image from his home in Portland, and he was able to see it. Then yesterday, we received a text from one of our neighbors with these two shots near our home in Oregon. That's our wind turbine in the lower right of these images.

We're bummed that we missed it. Instead, we went off to see a solar eclipse. Who knew we'd take so long to get home? Well...I guess I did. I just didn't know the Northern Lights would pay us a visit while we were gone.

So, okay...at least someone documented it. Another time, I hope.

Today we probably really will sit around and do almost nothing. It's our last day at this park. We'll be on our way to Hamilton, Missouri, tomorrow to see Missouri Star Quilt Co. Our next stop after that will take us into Kansas...our 49th state. We'll be filling in the last open spot on our map. You might want to start popping some popcorn now because it's going to be the thrill of the century. 

Okay...time for some pancakes. It's Mother's Day. Treat yourself. If you're lucky enough to still have your mother, then treat her too.

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.