Newsflash: don’t go camping in 95 + degree weather.
Holy cow, it was HOT!
Lake of the Ozarks KOA was our June glamping trip. I picked this campground because it was located in between Ha Ha Tonka and Lake of the Ozarks State Parks. I’m sort of on a kick to visit state parks. I have no idea why.
Side note: we’re also members of KOA and Good Sam now, too. We figure, why not? Since we’re going to be camping a lot more might as well save money, right?
Check in wasn’t until 2:00 so I had plenty of time to pack up our clothes and food. I felt pretty nauseous getting everything ready but I think it was mostly because I was hungry, once I ate something the nausea went away.
Side note: I’m still intermittent fasting. I eat between 1:00 – 6:00 – most days. I could definitely do better with it but my labs look good so I must be doing something right.
We left the house at 12:30 and got to the campground at 2:00 PM. The Lake of the Ozarks KOA is right off Hwy 54. And when I say right off the highway, I mean RIGHT OFF THE HIGHWAY. It was a nice a campground but not very peaceful, nor pretty. I wouldn’t say it was a parking lot, per se … okay , it was a parking lot surrounded by trees.
We were originally supposed to have site 76, but when the guy guided us to our spot and saw that it was completely sunny, no shade at all, and we were already melting, he took pity on us and moved us to site 74 which was a lot more shady. We thought that was pretty nice of him to do that.
We got set up and pretty much stayed around the campground the rest of the day. It was just too hot to really do anything other than … nothing. Even though we had a shady site, the campground is tucked back into the trees and there was virtually NO wind. It was stifling. But I have to say, our mini-split worked like a charm and kept the interior of the trailer nice and cool.
Kevin grilled some hamburgers for dinner. We buy the sirloin chuck with a pat of butter on it from Harter House and they are SO GOOD. Kevin is an excellent cook and a mean griller!
We used the table that Dr. M. and his wife bought for me for Christmas. We LOVE it!
After dinner, we watched “Pelican Brief” then went to bed. (This is the only time we watch movies – when we go camping. We watch it on the PS3 that Kevin got for free, or dirt cheap, somewhere).
We slept in the next morning. (This is also the only time Kevin and I sleep in – when we’re camping). We took a shower and I didn’t bother putting on makeup and I’m glad. It was so HOT!!! We went to Ha Ha Tonka State Park and walked around.
We saw the castle, (this has a really interesting and tragic story, if you’re interested in history):
The water tower:
And the natural bridge:
We also walked some trails:
The views were breathtaking:
Kevin’s hip started to bother him and we hadn’t brought any water with us, (yes, I know, stupid newbie hikers), so we took some wraps to the lake and relaxed by the water.
We bought some blueberry slushies from Taco Bell on the way back to our trailer. Kevin then BBQ’d some chicken and we had chicken bacon ranch sandwiches for dinner. Our movie that night was “Minority Report.”
The next day, we got up early and headed back to Ha Ha Tonka. There were a few trails that Kevin wanted to explore. We wanted to hit the trails before it got too hot. We were pretty pooped out from walking around the previous day and this hike was rough – a lot of climbing stairs and big roots and rocks but I’m glad we stuck it out. We saw a sheer rock wall and a cove popular with swimmers.
We then veered off onto another trail and came across this balanced rock:
It was starting to heat up by that time and so we headed back to the campsite and relaxed. We had tacos for dinner, (on the new countertop hot plate I bought) and watched the new Mad Max movie with Charlize Theron.
The next day, we were tired of trails and sweating, so we went into Linn City and shopped through a few thrift stores. The first place had some nice stuff but it was way overpriced. We hit pay dirt at the consignment store next and the third store was a boutique and again, way over priced. (Kevin has some booths at a thrift store so he’s always looking for things to buy for it).
We went to Pizza Hut for dinner then went back to the trailer where we walked around the campground a bit. We thought about going swimming but there was a family at the pool and we gave up on that idea. We tried to sit outside for a bit but it was too noisy from the traffic on the highway so we went back to the trailer and watched Aviator, which we hated.
We packed up and were back home by 11:00 AM the next day. I spent the rest of the day researching state campgrounds. We have avoided them in the past because most of the sites do not have sewer though they do have electric and water. Now I’m on a mission to figure out how we can comfortably camp with no sewer. I’ve been haunting the Recreation.gov website and am excited to try out different options. We’ll see.
I don’t know that we’ll be back to this specific area again, but I’m glad we had a chance to explore!
Thanks for reading!
Write From Karen 