Lake of the Ozarks
In making our grand travel plan, I wanted to hit up the Ozarks. But there are so many parts of the Ozarks, we had a hard time deciding. We opted for to Missouri, to the Lake of the Ozarks, and spend some time on the lake. But we didn’t expect the cold snap (turns out this is a theme for a good portion of our future trip, haha).
I don’t write about it much, but we are spending 5-6 days a week accomplishing solid school days. I have a set of curriculum that I’m trying to keep up with, and I love a challenge. This week our art assignment was to work on perspective in art works - being able to create the feeling of 3D in a 2D work. So we packed up our sketchpads and pencils and headed out to find some views of the lake. We opted to take the Rocky Top trail, which was a meander through the forest that bordered the lake. The trail was aptly named - full of large rocks and lots of roots.
It was also deserted, which meant the kids and I ( Aaron was working) had lots of time to talk about the things Amelia likes to talk about on walks - What would your dream room be? If you could have any superpower what would it be? It you could have any animal for a steed, pretend or fantasy, what would it be? You know, the important stuff.
The RV park we stayed at was quiet, and if there were other children there they were locked inside all day, because we didn’t see any. Mine get REALLY excited when there is a playground at the RV park, and if it is open — many aren’t due to Covid. The playground here was something you might call - retro. It was the stuff of MY childhood. All metal - silver slide in the sun, huge merry-go-round that brings back memories of bruised shins and dislocated shoulders, and a few swings that with some hard pumping would definitely shifts those bars right out of the earth. My kids - hog heaven. You know why? Because all that danger is so much fun.
It was wet when we arrived, and the buzzards circled all day. After a couple of days it dried up enough for us to have a fire. We made s’mores in the spooky full moon after enjoying the fiery red sunset.
On our last day the whole family was able to go out on a hike together, and we chose Spring Trail in Ha Ha Tonka State Park (what a great name). We walked down 313 steps to a natural spring. The water was so clear you. Could see everything below the surface. - plants, fish, rocks…It was tranquil, watching the current push the grasses back and forth. Well, tranquil except for Amelia complaining about walking down the stairs and fearing the inevitable hike back up. Sometimes one of us is understandably tired, and exploring on those days is hard.
We ended up leaving a night early, so that we could get a repair done to Big Dan. The motorhome has been slowly leaking coolant, and it was time to have it properly fixed. We left at night (alerting the night watchman at the RV park) and drove a few hours to spend the night in the Cummins parking lot (they had full hookups for us, so that was great). The family spent the entire day schooling and working in the lounge at the repair shop (thankfully with no one else there), and headed off towards Oklahoma a six hundred dollars poorer, but more confident our engine wouldn’t overheat and die. What did we get for $600? A 3 dollar EGR cooler hose o-ring and 4 hours of labor. Yes a plastic o-ring but was so far up in the engine bay it took 4 hours to swap it out.
