A few weekends ago, we finally got to go to the Kansas City Zoo after living in Marshall for over 3 years. We bought some passes as part of a church auction last Fall and had to use them by the end of 2017. As most of the year had gotten away from us, we finally got around to going at the beginning of November!
Ironically, it ended up being a great time to go, as many of the animals were out-and-about, giving us a pretty solid view of a tiger, chimpanzees, a polar bear, and many others.
Nana went, too!
Overall, I was pretty impressed with what I saw. It’s been since the mid-1990s since I’ve been there, and Brooke had never been there, so our only frame of reference was the (free) St. Louis Zoo at Forest Park. In many ways, the setting was similar to the St. Louis version, but this one would cost us at least $50 for a family of four, plus expensive concessions if we wanted to get any. On the other hand, while the St. Louis Zoo has some specific attractions that cost extra to enter (e.g. the insect house), there are more attractions included in the price of admission at the Kansas City Zoo (with the exception of things like the train and merry-go-round).
No screaming goats, sadly…
Overall, the selection of animals was solid, though I get the sense that the St. Louis Zoo just has more available to see. The snake house is bigger, the monkey house is bigger, the bird enclosure is larger…all of these are simply because the 1904 World’s Fair was held in St. Louis and those structures are still there, used as part of the zoo. I feel like the Australia exhibit in Kansas City is larger than in St. Louis, so there are definitely some animals that KC has that St. L doesn’t have, but they’re kinda the exception to the rule.
Jellyfish! No peanut butter, sadly…
Also, the Kansas City Zoo is really spread apart, so you have to take a shuttle to get to half of the animals. The elephants, giraffes, gorillas, and other large animals were in a connected area of the zoo, but far flung from the parking lots and the entry point. After spending our time there, we were tired enough (and rather chilly…), so we didn’t feel the need to trek out that far. I feel like the St. Louis Zoo is a bit more compact, so you can actually see quite a bit in a shorter amount of time.
Overall, we definitely had a good time and are glad we went! It took us 1.5 hours to get there, so it’s a shorter trip for us, but at the same time, we could spend the extra hour and go to St. Louis and spend less than $50 for the visit, using that money instead to visit Joanie’s Pizza or something.
We did hit up Trader Joe’s as we left KC though, so that made the trip extra worth it. Got some Dark Chocolate Stars before the Christmas rush hit! Mmmmmm…
Let’s be honest: we only bought it to make the Subaru look cooler…
Brooke doesn’t get to exercise all that often. It isn’t for lack of trying: she just doesn’t usually have the time to devote to it. She’s taken her bike down to Sedalia multiple times and she goes hiking at Bothwell with some frequency, but neither of these activities really “speaks” to her. And she totally doesn’t like jogging.
However, she’s been interested in getting into kayaking for the last few years. We see folks with boats on their trucks and we know people like going fishing at various places around here. That, and we know that there are some creeks and lakes within driving distance. And, we have a few Subarus, so they really have to have a kayak on top of one, right?
Really though, for some reason, Brooke’s always enjoyed rowing as an exercise. This goes back to the rec center at Truman State, where she’d use the rowing machine more than anything else. You’d have to ask her why, exactly, that is the one exercise she seems to prefer…maybe it goes back to her days on the Mississippi River or something…
Anyway, I checked out Craigslist and found a decent deal on a single-person, sit-in kayak that came with a cartop mount. It wasn’t the type of mount we wanted, but at least we could get it home. We went to Columbia and met up with the young woman who was selling it (didn’t have room for it, didn’t use it enough, yadda, yadda, yadda) and picked it up for less than she was asking for.
We got it home safe and sound, but with that type of roof mount, it was a hassle to get it up on the top of the car. It took two people, plus it was far easier to get the straps hooked up when you had someone else to toss them to. Thus, if it really takes two people to get on the car, Brooke would never use it.
The rooftop carrier we’ll actually use…
Therefore, we’re going to try the “J hook”-style mount. We picked them up at Amazon for less than $20 and hopefully they work as advertised. They seem pretty sturdy (though I had to Dremel out the plastic holes to make the screws fit properly), and in theory, the hooks allow ratchet straps to simply cross from the top down to the bottom without requiring one to tie the kayak to the hood or trunk of the vehicle.
Of course, the high this week is barely crossing the 50 F mark, so Brooke probably isn’t actually going to get to test this thing out for a few weeks months. I need to find a way to mount it in our garage, too, as sitting on the garage floor isn’t exactly ideal.
Hopefully it works out! We figure that resale on a kayak is probably high enough that we won’t lose much money on it, if any. Brooke can lift it down off the car, but she’ll probably want to get a little more practice lifting it up above her head. The J-hook mount should make this easy, as she just needs to get underneath it and “roll” it over onto the roof of the car. Practice will speed up that process, I’m sure.
After she actually tries this thing out (March? April?), I’ll have to post a few more pictures. She’s excited! I’m just happy to have my second roof bike mount back…
The garden is certainly on the decline, but we’re still picking a substantial amount of stuff. When all was said and done, we ended up with over 20 pints of green beans canned this year, along with all the rest of them we ate fresh. There are still some beans on the plants, but most of the pods are empty, so we’ve largely given up on them.
Tomatoes and soup beans
The tomatoes and the soup beans, on the other hand, are ridiculous. The tomatoes have certainly slowed, but Brooke has been keeping up with canning sauce, freezing batches until enough are ready. Brooke has canned 32 pints of tomato sauce so far. This time, she hasn’t canned any whole tomatoes like she’s done before.
Bounty!
We also have 5 quarts of soup beans. As in, a full ice cream bucket full of them. And there are plenty more on the vine. This may be our largest haul of those beans yet!
We’ve had some banana peppers here and there. Our pepper haul this year was lower than before, mostly because the volunteer tomatoes encroached and limited their growth. We haven’t eaten many of them yet, but Brooke’s frozen slices of them for later use.
Pumpkin…sadly, not gonna make it…
Here’s that really good pumpkin, completely with a grasshopper to add some scale to the picture. We were hopeful this one would make it, but some bugs drilled a hole in the side. It isn’t rotten yet, but we can’t say we’ve got much hope for its survival. There are a few other little baby pumpkins growing that are still yellow, but they surely won’t make it.
We think this is a watermelon…it kinda looks like it…
We actually had more luck with watermelons this year. This is the biggest one, yet it’s strangely misshapen. There’s another, rounder one, but this late in the season, we aren’t hopeful much will come of them. Still, it’s the most success we’ve had with watermelons! They just took a lot longer to get moving than we expected.
Popcorn!
The popcorn also took awhile to get going. There are fewer stalks this year, but what we’ve gotten so far is promising. Obviously, the weeds are taking over…
A closer look…
The corn ears are pretty skinny still, but I seem to remember them looking like that last year. We aren’t expecting to get a lot of popcorn, but last year’s crop worked out better than we expected, so perhaps we’ll be surprised again!
Raspberries, blackberries and future sweet potatoes.
The raspberries came back with a vengeance! I figured they were done a long time ago, but the last two weeks, we’ve been getting handfuls of them. We haven’t really done anything particularly interesting with them, but Meg and Calvin each had 10-15 last Saturday afternoon while they were playing outside and, frankly, that’s a good enough reason to grow them.
The sweet potatoes are still growing and we haven’t done anything with them yet. We assume there are potatoes down there. I guess we’ll find out eventually, when we get around to digging them up!
That peach tree is still growing great! The rest…well…
The fruit trees are still there, with the peach tree leading the growth chart. The rest of the trees got hit hard by Japanese Beetles and, while they’re still growing alright, they’ve got a long road to full recovery. Their trunks have fattened up substantially, so I hope the root system has followed suit, even though the leaves haven’t. We’ll add some fertilizer and mulch to them in the next few weeks and hope that helps them out over the winter months.
That’s about it! Probably the last post on this for the year, but who knows…maybe those tomatoes will keep going through November…
A few months ago, Meg asked to get some fish again. We had some back in St. Louis and moved them here, though at the time, Calvin couldn’t open doors and we could keep Sam away from the fish bowl. This time, however, Calvin’s older and isn’t know for following directions, so if we were going to get a fish tank again, we’d have to be a bit more careful about where it goes and whether it had a lid or not.
Brooke found a starter kit here in town that came with a 10 gallon tank, some peripheral fakery for the inside of the tank, and a nice lid that should keep small paws and hands out of the tank. However, we had to get the fish from Sedalia, as our options were non-existent here in town. Meg decided she wanted to go with tropical fish, which meant we needed to get a small heater for the tank. We also got a filter system, but it didn’t actually come with tubing, so that had to come from Sedalia, too.
Calvin likes his new friends!
Anyway, we ended up with over 10 small fish of varying types and 2 snails for the tank. So far, the fish have survived, and the kids feed them twice a day. We’re hopeful that the filter system and snails will limit the amount of cleaning we need to do, as this system is quite a bit more sophisticated than the small bowl we had for years awhile back. The filters can be picked up here in town and are supposed to be switched out around once a month, and the water should be exchanged at about 1/3 volume at the same time as the filter (or so we read). The tank is in the kid’s bedroom, which is close to a bathroom but not really close to the kitchen at all, so if it really is just a water exchange every once and awhile, along with the filter, we should probably be alright.
The kids seem enamored with it so far! All the fish have names, of course. 🙂
So, we knew last Spring about The Great American Eclipse, which was scheduled to begin here in Marshall on August 21st at 1:10 pm. There had been a lot of build-up around here, with various folks hitting the media circuit to warn locals of the potential for thousands of extra folks to arrive along the line of the path of totality (where the sun would be blocked out for nearly 3 minutes with a neat “halo” effect around the rim).
Despite the preparation, there wasn’t much we could do about the weather. In the days leading up to August 21st, the forecast vacillated from “sunny and clear” to “thunderstorms” to “cloudy.” We proceeded as if we’d get to see it though, so Meg went to school and Brooke kept Calvin home, as the lab school wasn’t going to let a bunch of pre-schoolers outside to stare at the sun.
It was my first day of class, so while I went through syllabi as normal, I abbreviated my 1:00 class to make sure we’d get to stay outside and watch the eclipse.
The setup.
While we were on vacation in Wisconsin, I ordered a special lens filter so I’d be able to get pictures of the sun. It’s the same material that we had in the eclipse glasses we had, but obviously big enough to cover my 52 mm lens. While our camera is aging rapidly (Nikon D60) and we only had a 200 mm zoom lens for it, I had hoped I’d be able to get something from it.
“Totality”…
Sadly, at the time of totality, this was the best I could get. Literally, five more minutes is all we needed for the clouds to part and we would have seen it. Columbia, MO got to see all of it as the clouds pulled out a few minutes before totality was set to begin. Heck, even a few minutes out of town, people could see it just fine. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be.
In the next few minutes after totality ended, I was able to get use the filter to get all the shots depicted in the composite at the top of the post. I was able to get some pretty good pictures out of that old camera! Just not as many as I wanted…
Brooke got a neat effect with her kitchenware!
While I was on campus, Brooke stayed home with Calvin, as she didn’t want to brave traffic down to Sedalia (even though she would have gotten to see totality down there, apparently…). She tried a pinhole experiment using a strainer from the kitchen and actually got a pretty neat effect!
Calvin got to look at the sun!
Calvin was at least initially interested in watching the eclipse, though at the time of totality, he was paying more attention to worms on the ground than what was happening in the sky.
Meg had a series of activities out at her elementary school, so she got a good learning experience out of it. They stayed outside through totality and for a few minutes afterward. They came out a few more times after the clouds parted so the kids could put on their glasses again.
Ultimately, we didn’t really notice thousands more people around town, though it did feel a bit more crowded. The skies got darker, the street lights came on a Monday afternoon, and a lot of students from far away got to experience something cool.
Thankfully, there’s another eclipse coming through Missouri on April 8, 2024. We’ll have to head to the Eastern part of the state to see it, and I’ll have to cancel class that Monday, but I hear it’s worth it!
This post follows a previous one that sets up the first part of the journey!
Beach time!
The next day (Tuesday), was beach day on Lake Superior. Big Bay State Park on Madeline Island has a relatively lengthy beach to enjoy, with an expansive shallow(ish) area for kids to wade out in. Meg was tall enough to touch for a solid distance out (30 yards?), but Calvin wasn’t quite big enough. We had both kids’ life jackets along just in case, but Meg probably would have been fine without it. Still, it was fun for her to float out on Lake Superior, especially when a big boat would come by to push her back toward shore.
We spent a good 5 hours or so at the beach that day, and it ended up being the nicest day for weather during the whole week. The water was really cold, but when you’re 3 and 7, that doesn’t much matter.
One of the best pictures I’ve ever taken…
The first night’s sleep went surprisingly well. It didn’t get all that cold that night (mid-50s, maybe?) and we were all pretty tired, so we all got a lot of rest. We went to bed earlier than intended because of the vast number of mosquitoes swarming around. Brooke didn’t really feel like staying up and battling them and, while I stayed up reading for a little bit, I had to turn in earlier than I intended as well.
The next morning, after breakfast, we prepped for a hike near the lake on the the boardwalk. This is the same hike Brooke and I did 10 years ago but, due to the short legs in tow this time, we went a bit slower. Calvin still fits in the Ergo, so we had him in there for awhile, but he wanted to get down for the last half of the trip out. Overall, the hike is very flat and clean due to said boardwalk, but you get to see some of the local flora and fauna.
During this time, rain was heading into our general area, so we didn’t stay out there much past lunchtime. We headed back to our campsite as clouds continue to get dark, just after noon.
Rained a bit…
That afternoon was on-and-off rain. It got heavier at points but, at least then, the tent was doing a great job keeping the water out of the clothes, sleeping bags, etc. We had some card games in case something like this happened and, for a time, the kids were pretty well entertained. We enticed them with an ice cream trip to town for later in the afternoon, though that trip was really playing “double duty” for our ulterior motives…
Ice cream? Yes, please!
Our internet connection was virtually non-existent at the campsite, nor did we have any phone service, so text messages, phone calls, etc. couldn’t get to us. Going into down, we were able to check and see whether we were going to get to go on the cave tours we had scheduled for Thursday morning. As we couldn’t really check the weather forecast either at the campsite, we also were checking such things while we entertained the kids with ice cream.
At the time, we (and the tour company) were hopeful that things would clear up for Thursday morning, so we proceeded expecting that we’d still get to go. We had a deposit down on the trip and hadn’t paid the rest of the bill yet, so the spots were reserved. After the ice cream, we went back to our campsite for awhile.
Brooke’s extra special stew sounded really good in the rainy weather…
Around this time, the rain let up enough to get dinner done. We still had the kids play in the tent while Brooke did the heavy lifting, as the site was quite muddy now and we didn’t want Calvin rolling around everywhere.
I should note that Calvin was actually really good about taking showers on this trip. Up until now, he’d taken a few showers at our house, but any evening I wanted to go (which was every evening…), he wanted to go with me, so he and I stayed pretty clean, all things considered.
Meg and Brooke, on the other hand…
Set up a “living room,” of sorts!
We set up a “living room” in part of the tent after the rain started to pick up. I’d also noticed that a puddle had formed near the side of the tent where the kids were sleeping, so we moved our air mattress over to the other side, so the kids could sleep on the “living room” side, just in case water started to seep in.
Ultimately, we made the right call, but for the wrong reason. That night, it felt like the skies opened and Niagara Falls fell from the sky. We later found out it was only, like, less than an inch that was recorded, but it sure felt like more than that on our tent (perhaps it was more on the island that was recorded in nearby Bayfield?).
Still, as it had been raining nearly all afternoon and into the evening, water began to seep in from the roof of the tent over Brooke and I (so it would have hit the kids, but we had changed places!). It was coming in along a length of the tent, but not specifically along a seam. My only guess is that so much rain fell, it just pooled and seeped in through the tent.
Brooke and I moved down to where the kids were, but as they were sleeping sideways relative to the rest of the tent, we were kinda “scrunched up” while the kids were stretched out. Needless to say, without the air mattress and while in the fetal position, we didn’t sleep all that well. It only rained until 1:00 am or so, but it was enough to make our lives difficult.
The next morning, we went to town, but it was still raining, and more was coming in. We’d already decided that if the tour was canceled, we were just going to head on back toward home, as rain was scheduled to continue and it wasn’t going to dry out before Thursday night (you know, when we’d like to sleep on said air mattress again).
Sadly, the tour was indeed canceled. It was canceled before we even got there, but as we didn’t have phone service, we didn’t know that until we got to town. Still, the company refunded our money in full, so while it was disappointing we didn’t get to go, we at least got our money back.
After returning to the campsite, we left the kids in the car while Brooke and I packed up. It took us a few hours (in the rain…) to pack as much as we could and shove the wet tent into the car-top carrier. We were going to stay in Cedar Rapids that night and Brooke had called ahead to make sure we could just move our reservation date up a night and they said the could do it.
We made the trek to Cedar Rapids, leaving Bayfield a little after noon (after crossing on the ferry, which was more full than usual due to trucks and campers), and finally got to Cedar Rapids at 10:00 pm that night. It shouldn’t have taken 10 hours to make that drive, but spotty rain showers and the lack of highways slowed down our progress.
Regardless, it was nice to sleep in a great bed again and take a shower…
Our old stomping ground in Iowa!
The next morning, we got up and swam in the indoor pool for a bit after breakfast before loading up the car again and heading into Swisher, IA to see the old house (it’s still there!) and visit Kava House for some coffee. Sadly, Jazzy Chestnut wasn’t “on tap” that morning, but we brought 2 lbs back for Mom and Dad while we were there.
A little after 1:00 or so that day, we made it back to Marshall! Though we had to cut the trip short, it ended up being nice to pick up Edie from the “doggie hotel” a bit early, we got to dry out the tent (and everything else…) really well, and we had a full Saturday and Sunday to acclimate to “the real world” before work on Monday.
We had a good time! We’ll have to make another trip up north someday to get those cave tours done. But next year…we have other plans…
A little over a decade ago, Brooke and I went up to a wedding in Minnesota and stopped off in Wisconsin for a brief camping trip on Madeline Island, one of the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior. We went to Branson earlier this Summer with the Linsenbardt side of the family (that I still haven’t posted about yet, so I need to do that…) and then had two months of school for Brooke and me, so we decided it would be nice to return to Madeline Island, this time with two youngsters in tow.
Hangin’ out in Duluth on the way up North.
Rather than making the nearly 12 hour drive in a single trip, this time we Airbnb-ed a place in Duluth, MN, about 2.5 hours from our ultimate destination. We made a similar decision last year on our way to Colorado, and it was still a good call.
The house we stayed in was a two-story, where another couple were staying upstairs and we were staying downstairs (with direct access from the outside). The kids slept on a futon while Brooke and I got a king-size bed. Worked out pretty well! We were pretty tired after hours on the road, but after briefly taking some stuff inside, we went to a local restaurant for dinner, after which, we tried getting some local beer.
FYI: Minnesota is still backwards and doesn’t sell beer (or any alcohol) after 6:00 pm on Sundays. Apparently, they just started selling any alcohol on July 1, 2017. Seriously, people. What are you doing.
We’re on a boat!
After a pretty restful sleep, we hopped back on the road heading toward Bayfield, WI, where the ferry crosses over to Madeline Island. We grabbed some groceries (bread, chips…) and local beer (because Wisconsin isn’t as backward as Minnesota…) at the store and then waited a few minutes for the ferry to take us across. Meg and Calvin, of course, very much liked getting out of the car and walking around on a boat, so despite the necessity of going on this particular ferry, it served as something of an “event” for the kids to enjoy.
The drive from the docks to the campground is around 6 miles, so it didn’t take all that long to get over there. Like the last time Brooke and I went, we reserved a “backwoods”-style campsite that was pretty private, but close enough that the shower houses were a brief jaunt away. The state park was pretty crowded with quite a few pull-behind trailers, as well as tents, so separating ourselves from all the rest of the noisy families was probably a good call.
The pretty significant downside, however, was the mosquitoes. In that backwoods camp, the mosquitoes were pretty intolerable. And resistant to Repel Lemon Eucalyptus. And ignorant of citronella candles. Seriously, they were bad.
A home away from home.
New for this trip, Brooke picked up a screened-in shelter from Aldi for $40 (woo!), and while that helped the bug issue, it still wasn’t perfect. Some non-biting insects were always flying around at the top of it, but at least they left us alone for eating. However, she’d always want to leave the doors slightly ajar when cooking for logistical reasons, so more bugs would get in. We’re glad we have the shelter, and it definitely helped, but it wasn’t perfect.
Gotta eat something, right?
The weather early on was quite pleasant, with highs in the low 80s and lows in the upper 50s. That first night went pretty well and the kids were just fine going to sleep around 9:00, when it was dark enough. Brooke and I were going to stay up with a fire, but the mosquitoes also didn’t really care about smoke from a campfire, so unless we wanted to put on pants, long-sleeves, and Brooke’s bee gear, we were out of luck.
The next morning, Brooke made some pancakes on our new propane grill, which was also a big plus for this trip. I tried cooking steaks on the open fire the previous night and, while they were edible, I couldn’t get the fire consistently hot enough to get them “medium well” as I tend to prefer it. We picked up the steaks at the grocery store in Bayfield and they were just a bit bigger than we probably should have gone with. Ah well. The stove, on the other hand, worked great for the rest of our meals. Brooke’s French Press was also a big help.
There isn’t much to talk about right now, but I did want to note a few goings-on from the last few weeks with regard to the good ol’ Marshall Homestead…
The green beans, tomatoes, soup beans, pumpkins and watermelons are all moving along pretty well! There are some tiny green tomatoes on the plants and the green beans are flowering, so all’s well on that front. The green pepper plants are still pretty small: two of them are looking good, while the other two are on the short side, and are getting encroached by “volunteer” tomato plants from last year.
Wrecked ’em…
Other than that, Brooke laid waste to the remaining lettuce, pea plants and carrots this weekend and ended up with a substantial carrot crop. The lettuce had gone to seed a week or two ago, so it was time to end them, and the carrots had been in for months now, so it was time to pull them up.
After hours of processing (that, thankfully, I had very little to do with), we ended up with ~15 lbs of carrots, 12 lbs of which Brooke chopped up, blanched, then vacuum-sealed and dropped in the freezer. Last year, we also got a lot of carrots, but we left them in the fridge crisper for far too long and then ended up “floppy,” which isn’t exactly great if you like raw carrots.
Still, despite Brooke’s metric ton of time working with them, she’s pretty satisfied with the haul of organic carrots she grew.
In other news…
Otherwise, a few weeks ago, Brooke checked out her beehives and removed 6 shallow frames-worth of combed honey. There’s more in there, but some frames had brood and others weren’t quite full yet. Our new hive from late-April is also doing well, so Brooke put the super on it in hopes we’ll be able to get some honey from them later this summer, too.
Honey!
Brooke will scrape off the wax from these and likely make some candles (among other things), and she’ll extract the honey along with her Dad this weekend, as he’s got some frames to process, too.
Generally (as I can’t remember if I ever explained this…), honey extraction involves removal of the wax cappings, insertion of the frames into a cylindrical drum, and then spinning them around to use centrifugal force, pulling the honey out and allowing it to drop down to the bottom of the drum, thus letting you fill up jars of honey. It’s a messy and time-intensive process, so while you could get honey directly from these frames, it’s a lot easier to process a lot of frames all at once, saving you clean-up time.
Therefore, we will figure out how much honey we got this weekend. 🙂
Evil. EVIL!!!
The last thing I wanted to mention was that Japanese Beetles have arrived in Marshall. The two pictured above were on our neighbor’s tree, but we’ve seen them on our trees, too, as well as on our sunflowers. We’ve got multiple leaves that look like those pictured above. Our understanding is that this crop of beetles were spending their time reproducing and laying eggs, all of which will hatch later this summer and wreak havoc. Hopefully, our growing season will be mostly done by then…
Still, we put in some praying mantids last week in an effort to kill off insect-derived pests while not spraying anything on our flowering green beans, as that would likely affect our bees. We’ll see if it work… We ordered the mantids and put them in a cage (an old bee package) back in late-May and it took almost 3 weeks for them to show up. There were 10s, if not 100, of them in that package before we released them on our green beans, so hopefully they do their jobs.
We own quite a bit of backpacking gear, much of which I’ve had since before Brooke and I were married when I’d go on trips over Spring Break in high school and college. After we had kids, obviously, it got a little more difficult to be gone for multiple days on trips without the family. Thus, now that I’ve got a 7-year-old to indoctrinate in my interests, I thought this summer would yield an opportunity for a little daddy-daughter time out in the wilderness.
I hadn’t done much backpacking in Missouri, as most of my trips were to Tennessee and Arkansas (with a single trip to Colorado back in 8th grade). The trails I’d done in Missouri were relatively far south and didn’t have much access to water. In searching for “beginner backpacking trails” that would be suitable for a 7-year-old first-timer, I came across the Bell Mountain Loop Trail near Salem, MO, as part of Mark Twain National Forest. The trail represented a 10 mile loop that had good overlooks, had access to water at least at one point, and was rated as relatively easy for beginners.
Before the yelling started…
Things started out pretty good, really. In many ways, this is the most “in shape” I’ve ever been for backpacking, as the last time I did this, I was a good 30 pounds heavier. Meg, of course, had gone hiking with us in limited settings, but never with this length of time, or overnight in the wilderness.
We got started on an Ozark Trail spur that would lead us to the Bell Mountain Trail Loop. The OT section was mostly a dry creek bed, which isn’t great to hike on if you’re an adult, let alone a 7-year-old. Meg and I had good hiking shoes on, so we were relatively fine, but it did get tedious, and we had to go slower than we otherwise would. Still, we continue onward and upward until we hit the Bell Mountain Trail (or so we thought…).
Getting tired already…
We went for about as far as we could, but we were hoping we’d get to the main creek for our first night of camping, as it would provide some entertainment for Meg, and a solid water source to get us going the next morning. We kept going as far as we could, but it was getting darker and we had already gone a good 4 miles with no creek in sight. Meg was pretty tired (we didn’t start hiking until 4:00 pm, and there was a slight rain threat hovering about), and we were on a flat section of the trail that had some good camping spaces for our tent, so we went ahead and parked for the night.
Reading while Daddy packs up the tent…
The first night went remarkably well! It dipped down into the low-50s overnight, but we were pretty warm in our tent. We bought a 2-person Kelty backpacking tent, as traditionally, I’d always relied on a hammock and a tarp – something that doesn’t work quite as well for a 7-year-old. The tent worked very well, so I think that purchase was well-founded.
Also, the macaroni and cheese I made for dinner that night went over pretty well with the kid. 🙂
Anyway, we kept hiking the next morning and still never ran across the creek. We did spot a really nice overlook and took a few panoramic pictures with my phone. We did eventually spot a fire pit that we thought we recognized from our map, so we continued onward.
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’…
Eventually, we’d gone so far that it was getting late in the morning and we still hadn’t found water. Not that we needed water right then, but we would need it for cooking later in the day, so I was getting a bit worried. I was also very confused by a fork in the trail that shouldn’t have been there, at least according to the map.
Thus, we opted to turn around and start heading back. We figured that there were some ponds we had passed that weren’t ideal for filtration, but could still be used to keep us going until we could get to the car the next morning. We were also hoping to get moving relatively early the next day so we could hit up Heinrichshaus in St. James before getting to Marshall in time to pick up Calvin from school.
Anyway, we kept going for a few miles and, at this point, I was keeping an eye on my LTE signal so I could try and download a Google Earth file that would show us where, exactly, on the trail we actually were.
So, here’s what happened…
Basically, we saw that sign early in the trip that’s pictured at the top of this page, and it pointed to the left. We also knew that we needed to take a left to head toward the Fire Ring indicated by the star above, as it would take us down toward Joe’s Creek for water (and there were two creek crossings on the map). Well, we thought that sign was at the trail fork circled in red. Instead, that sign was way before that, at the hairpin turn indicated by the red hexagon.
So, we took a left, but we were still on the OT spur and not actually on the Bell Mountain Loop yet. When we got to the real turnoff, we just kept on heading straight and didn’t notice that there was another trail heading off to the left just over our shoulders. Literally, there was a small orange flag that was practically impossible to see from the direction we were coming from.
So yeah, instead of eventually seeing the fire ring indicated by the star, we instead saw the fire rings that were actually on Bell Mountain, and the scenic views they entailed. Also, based on my step tracker’s GPS, we ended up heading toward an entirely different parking lot before we turned around: the “extra fork in the road” we saw, we should have taken a left instead of a right. Of course, we thought we were heading clockwise on the loop, but instead, we should have been going counter-clockwise.
Anyway, we had turned around, we figured this all out, and we kept trekking back to the car, knowing we wouldn’t cross the creek for water. We pushed it quite a bit and ended up going 10 miles that way.
Meg was not happy about this. There was yelling, there was screaming. There was a lot of “I thought you said we were close!!!” Technically, we were “close,” but considering that Meg had to stop literally every 2 minutes because her feet hurt, it was taking forever.
It came to this.
I even ended up carrying her backpack attached to mine in order to keep us moving. So yeah, my feet hurt, too, but she didn’t really care…
So yeah, we kept on going and eventually made it back to the car, where I had some water packed for our arrival. We also drove to a nearby creek passing so I could filter some more.
Back in one piece!
It was quite a bit colder the next night, dipping down into the upper-40s, so that was a little less fun, but we still survived the night. Meg hobbled along for awhile and didn’t really want to walk at all after we got to camp, though she was fine by mid-next day.
All in all, if you ask her about it, she’ll tell you she had fun with the camping aspect of the trip, but the hiking part wasn’t her favorite. I think I can convince her to go again someday, but we may want to shake these memories a bit before I try again!
Ultimately, it was good to get backpacking again. If I have to wait until Calvin’s ready, I can live with that.
We were trying to come up with something special to do for Meg’s birthday this year when Brooke happened to notice one of our favorite “family friendly” musical groups, The Okee Dokee Brothers, were coming to Kansas City. The concert fell around Meg’s birthday, so close enough, right?
A bit of background: Brooke ran across their music 5 or 6 years ago and, though I can’t remember why exactly we listened in the first place (let alone how we discovered them…), my recollection mostly surrounds their fourth album, Can You Canoe?, which was inspired by their trip down the Mississippi River from St. Paul, MN to St. Louis, MO. For Meg, it was a collection of creative and catchy tunes. For Brooke and me, it was intelligently produced kids’ music that hearkened back to our own childhood experiences in this region, while also representing great bluegrass-style music. That album went on to win the Grammy for Best Children’s Album in 2013. They have since come out with two other albums, one inspired by their hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail, and another around their trip to the Rocky Mountains.
Thus, after church this morning, we went ahead and hit the road for Crown Center, where we ended up at Fritz’s again. I think we waited a good 45 minutes to get into that place last year before going to Legoland for Meg’s 6th birthday, but this time, the line was considerably shorter (read: non-existent). We were in-and-out relatively quickly and moved on to the Kansas City Folk Festival.
Seating was limited…
The event itself was pretty well organized, taking place at the Westin hotel in most of its various conference rooms. Each show took place “on the hour” and ran for 45 minutes, and 5 or 6 shows were going on simultaneously, allowing listeners to move between rooms and get a good sampling of musical styles. A substantial number of the acts were Spanish language-focused, which was very interesting musically, though difficult to deal with lyrically. Still, Meg seemed like she was “bobbing her head” quite a bit, even if she didn’t know what exactly was going on.
The Main Event!
The Okee Dokee Brothers went on at 2:00 and were great. In the picture above, Meg and Calvin are sitting on the floor just in front of the stage, so they had a front row seat to all the action.
This room was packed with families. The organizers probably should have seen this coming, though to be honest, how all these people had heard of The Okee Dokee Brothers is beyond me. Still, Brooke and I had to hold up a wall on the side of the room, with Calvin running back and forth from where Meg was sitting and where we were standing. We weren’t next to Meg at all during the music, but we could see her copying the motions and singing along, as she knew many of the songs already. So far as concerts go, they did a good job mixing their older stuff with their newer stuff, so that helped out quite a bit, as we haven’t listened to their newest album as much as their older ones.
It ended up being a fun time! Not a particularly cheap experience, as were were also funding our “attendance” to all of the other bands that were there, but ultimately, I think we all agreed it was worth the trip. The music was great, the experience was something different from what Meg’s used to, and it was an excuse to get out of the house for a day.
