When does a Journey Become An Adventure?
Two weeks ago I packed the truck up with all the camping gear and was ready for an adventure. On Friday of that week, I finished packing and after work Winston and I loaded up for a weekend camping adventure. Little did I know it was not at all going to be what was planned.
We stopped in town grabbed a few last min items and completed some additional Items and then picked up a friend. I had been watching the weather and there was a little rain in the forecast but nothing out of the normal for a midwest spring.
The destination was just under three hours southwest. We had not even made it out of town before the first warning sign appeared. A large multi-car crash had happened on the main road out of town slowing us down. It appeared everyone was standing around the cars and no one seemed to be in terrible shape, unlike their cars.
We joked as it was very likely that someone was on their phone and crashed into the back of the vehicle in front of them causing a chain reaction of five or so vehicles that caused them all to have a very bad evening. The town we live in/near has a really bad problem with distracted drivers and the crash did not surprise us.
Finally making it onto the highway we picked up speed and headed south. The rain also showed up but nothing like a southwest deluge where you have to pull over because you are unable to see the road in front of you. Thinking of it we continued on and I even remember remarking that it was still pretty bright out at nearly 8 pm that evening.
We arrived at the state park where we were going to camp and headed to find the campsite. The gate was not closed at the entrance of the road but we did arrive after hours. (Missouri State Parks have a new rule more to come on that later). We found ourselves at another closed gate with no signs posted saying it was closed and the campground sign had not been flipped to show that there were no vacancies.
Looking at the map it looked like we could head out of the park and down the road and be able to enter the campsite area further down thinking maybe just that section of the road was closed. We passed the area where the road was supposed to be and we were now on a bridge. The road we were looking for was directly underneath us. Driving a little further down the road we stop and look at the maps again and sure enough the road we needed was in fact going under the bridge. Back into the park, we went hoping there was a road that maybe we had missed and the gated one was simply a gated entrance to a different section of the park.
Same path same results. Time to dig into it even further. We stopped and parked in the park’s visitor center parking lot and started looking at information. Thankfully we had cell reception. What we did not know at the time of arrival that we would shortly find out is the entire county we were in had been shut down by flooding due to heavy rains that had come through. We had driven through the same storm on our way in but thought nothing of it.
We continued to look for options but everything was either closed or did not take late arrival reservations despite it only being 8 pm. We looked at maps and apps and hunted down places that might let us stay for the night. The common thread is that if you are in Missouri make sure you get even an emergency reservation completed prior to 7 pm that same day. The State Park system is run by Recreation.gov however a new rule put into effect rather recently stops any and all travelers from arriving late to the campsites. Some rumors are that people have been turned away when trying to set up. (this was found in a Facebook comment so I’m not sure how reliable that is.)
Some issues we found with Missouri KOAs, Hipcamp Campsites, State Parks, RV parks, etc in March is that their “camping season” does not start until April 1. We were a weekend too early I suppose. Due to this many of them were either closed for the night, not accepting reservations, or closed due to the weather for the weekend. We discussed our options and decided that if the area was under a flood warning currently and the big parks were closed for the rest of the weekend there really was no point to stay in that area. Our exploring would have been full of mud and soggy ground making it nearly impossible to explore some of the areas we wanted to in the Mark Twain National forest later on Saturday.
