Chapter 3: Camping Challenge

In the meantime the Missouri Department of Conservation was holding a contest: visit 12 specific conservation sites in Missouri during the year. We would receive conservation books, binoculars, and various other sundry items after we documented visits to every 4th site. Visiting all 12 would enter us into a drawing at the end of the year for new camping equipment. This sounded like fun and we are always up for a challenge. My children and I loved camping and nature. I decided this was just the thing to do with them before the baby arrived. We mapped it out and thought that we could do them all in about 10-12 days. My obstetrician wasn’t a fan of this trip. But then her idea of camping was backbacking through mountains. We happen to like flush toilets, sightseeing, and tours. She had no complaints about any of these things and we left on our trip when I was 32 weeks pregnant.

Now, I love my kids dearly. But let me tell you that traveling with 2 teenagers isn’t easy. We’d been on the road only a couple of hours before I was tempted to leave some of them in the middle of the highway. But I was determined that we were going to have a fun bonding experience before the baby arrived. Patrick was learning to drive and practiced on all the state park roads. Being teenagers, he and his brother didn’t really believe that I would be able to find all the conservation locations on our list. This just added to the stress.

We started out by visiting a Nature Center about 4 hours from home then headed down to Branson and Silver Dollar City where the first 4 conservation areas were located. We spent 4 days there camping in a state park, touring show caves, visiting fisheries, swimming, doing some short easy hikes, and arguing. My daughter didn’t want to leave. Her brothers made a swing for her and we took that to each of our stops on the rest of the trip. We spent a day in Silver Dollar City and another day at the original Bass Pro Shop. What a store that is! Museum and store all rolled into one. A great learning experience. Even I enjoyed it immensely.

Our next stop was between Springfield and Kansas City. It turned out to be a lonely conservation area popular with hunters during certain seasons. We checked in with the agent at the office who was surprised that we intended to stay the night. Yes, they had camping sites. Yes, they had toilets. No, they didn’t have any other campers that night, running water, stores, or security; all the things we were used to. But it was beautiful and we were tired. We set up our tents on the shore of a lake, had supper, and passed an uneventful evening around the campfire. The next morning we woke up, stuck our heads out of the tents and had the most spectacular view of the whole trip. The entire campsite area and lake was full of geese! Flocks of them. Covering every inch of ground. We’d never seen anything like it before. We instantly realized what all those little “piles” were that we saw all over the place the night before. As amazing as it was though, we also realized the difference between Conservation camping and state park camping. We decided to check our maps and plan on state parks for the rest of the trip.

After filling up our water jugs at the nearest little store we could find, we spent the next day visiting friends that lived in Kansas City. Weston State Park was next on our list, close to Kansas City, the Pony Express in St. Joseph, a few wineries, museums, and several other conservation sites we hadn’t visited yet. We spent 3 days in the area and they were hard days. Patrick had left our hammer 100 miles down the road in that lonely Conservation Area where we had spent the night, so we had to find a hardware store before we could set up camp. Cabin tents are not like the modern tents we have now. They absolutely MUST be staked down to put them up. The Pony Express was harder to find that we thought it would be. We got lost every time we tried to find something in Kansas City that we wanted to see. Not to mention the “nuclear mosquitoes” that inundated Weston and eventually sent us fleeing for comfort to some other part of the state. Still, we had fun there. The park ranger took pity on a heavily pregnant lady and sprayed our campsite heavily each night, to the dismay of our “neighbors” who were told it wasn’t part of the service. We stayed up late one night playing cards with some of the other campers. The kids learned that pet ferrets left to run around in the bathrooms STINK to high heaven. And even the local varmints will not come in a driving rain to steal chicken abandoned over night on the grill.

Our final stop on the trip was Mark Twain State Park, only a couple of hours from home. We visited Hannibal and all the local sites there. We were almost finished with the challenge the Department of Conservation had set before us. We picked a campsite close to the restrooms and since the kids were loath to return home after so long on the road I told them we could stay until the food ran out. Well, that was one of the kid’s favorite camping spots. The boys set up Ouisa’s swing and the two youngest when around to the older folks in the campground telling them how much fun they were having and that their mom said they could only stay as long as we had food. In came the donations! I was stunned to see my children coming back to camp with armloads of canned goods and watermelons! We spent the next couple of days waking up to the cardinals that came in close to our camp for the nuts we would give them, swimming, relaxing, playing cards, and listening to the raccoons forage the trash cans with extreme regularity. I was able to rest up considerably during our stay there. And the baby grew a lot. Sleeping outside was good for us. And Patrick got a lot of practice driving. But it was eventually time to go home.