Highway 125 Park

Trudy was at the wheel fighting off car sickness with each sharp turn. I was gawking at the scenery. Ben had his nose in a book. The Ozarks surrounded us.

Just short of Peel Ferry, the sun came out and we decided to look for a place to unpack our soggy camping stuff and dry out while the weather was good, someplace we might make sandwiches for lunch. And all of the sudden, there it was: Highway 125 Park. The sign said that there were no entrance fees.

At first it looked grim. There was no one in the booth at the entrance. The sign suggested is might be closed. There were no obvious camping sites down the road, no obvious place to pull off, no way to air out our stuff, no good place to have lunch.

"Let's look down there," Trudy said, as we came to another road in the park.

I grumbled.

"Yeah, let's go down there, dad," Ben said, sticking up for Trudy.

And sure enough, just a little bit down that road, around a bend, on the top of a hill overlooking Bull Shoals Lake, in the sun, with a stiff breeze blowing out of the east, we found camping sites perfect for what we needed. Many were empty. And there were picnic tables. And there were showers with hot water.

We staked our tents down, and within 20 minutes they were bone dry. We laid out the tarps and sleeping bags and pads to dry in the sun and wind. We hung our wet clothes on a clothesline we strung between the trees, digging out our clothespins to keep the clothes from flying away in the breeze. We each took a gloriously hot shower. And we made peanut butter sandwiches.

In two hours, refreshed from our showers, with sandwiches in our bellies and dry stuff folded, rolled and packed overhead, we were again winding our way thru the woods to the ferry, where we crossed the lake into Missouri.

And then, we were on the road for Michigan.

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