Thursday 4-6 Trail of Tears State Park

 

 

It rained all night and into the early morning and the wind blew furiously. When we woke up it was still raining so we decided we would stay where we were until the front was through and the streets were drier. When you went outside you had be careful that the wind didn’t slam the door. The temperatures were in the forties so it was cold. Larry braved the weather and took Flo out for her morning walk. Flo didn’t care she loves the cold.

I played with my pizza stone today. I baked biscuits for breakfast and cookies for dessert. Both times I put the stone on the oven rack with the cookie sheet on top of the stone. I still have to monitor the temperature and time. The biscuits and cookies came out perfect.

After lunch the rain was gone and the roads were dry enough for us to continue. Larry thought it might be nice to stay at Horseshoe Lake State Park in Illinois, it was about 50 miles away. The ride there was very nice. I spent most of the time trying to stay awake but when I was awake the scenery was very nice. When we got to the park we didn’t like what we saw. The lake was full of trees and it reminded me of Louisiana swamps. We decided to continue down the road.

Larry had figured if we didn’t like Horseshoe Lake State Park we would go on the other side of the Mississippi River to Cape Girardeau, Missouri to Trail of Tears State Park. We took another cool bridge over the Mississippi River. The first thing we did when we got to Cape Girardeau was to find a place to get propane. We were getting low and Larry knew through experience the the last third of the tank goes fast. He didn’t want to take any chances. He found a U-Haul and they took care of us. Now we have a full tank of propane and were back in business. Onward to Trail of Tears State Park.

Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge that took into Missouri

We saw a sign pointing toward the park indicating it was 11 miles away. We drove for awhile and came across another sign that said 11 miles. We thought this was funny because we had already gone about 8 miles. We went the direction the sign told us to. We came to another sign this sign said 1 mile to get to the park. We didn’t get too far when we came across a welcome sign to Trail of Tears State Park. Larry decided to turn there. He made the right decision considering it took us to the visitor center which we found out was only open on Saturday and Sunday. There were two campgrounds in the park. One campground was Lake Boutin and the other campground was the Mississippi River. We drove through Lake Boutin but they only had tent sites so we drove to the Mississippi River site, all of these sites were reserved for the weekend but we only needed the site for a night so we found one we liked and parked the Minnie. The host came by and we paid for the night. The host was very friendly and visited with us for a little while.

Trail of  Tears State Park

Trail of Tears State Park is a beautiful park. The bathrooms had showers but for some reason they were located in the day use area which was quite a walk from the camp sites. We wanted to take a shower so we had to walk, I didn’t mind considering I needed the exercise. The bathrooms weren’t heated and had one shower. The view of the Mississippi River was very nice. We watched a few tugboats move barges down the river. There is a railroad track that runs along the bank of the river and it blows its horn everytime it comes by. We heard a couple trains go by but they didn’t disturb our sleeping. We had a very pleasant stay at Trail of Tears State Park.

Flo enjoying her stay at Trail of Tears State Park

           

The Mississippi River from the campground                            The day area