Camping at Cuivre River

 

A few weeks ago we packed up the van, loaded the canoe, and headed for a quick one-night camping trip at Cuivre River State Park in Troy, MO.  It was great to get away from the house for a little while and experience the “great outdoors.”  As you can see in the picture, we had the van loaded down with the essentials of summer fun…namely a cooler full of bottled water .

 

  After finding our camping spot and unpacking our stuff we headed to the lake:

(I think Benjamin thought he looked impressive standing in the canoe.)

 

Lydia was one happy camper

   When we got back to our tent we found that the raccoons had gotten in our food and run off with our dinner!

While we had smores…

….Kate made some fried cinnamon apples.

   While we were making food around the campfire you could hear the raccoons in the woods and when we’d search the woods with our flashlights you’d see a few yellow beady eyes peering back at you from a few yards away.

  Before going to bed we made sure to put all of the food and trash inside of the van, but the raccoons still to the camp site and brush by the tent.  They were obviously very used to human campers and were bold enough to get within a few feet of us.  A couple of them got unto the rack on the back of our van (see first picture in post) and tried getting into the water bottles.  They kept us up for a few hours, but we eventually fell asleep. By the way…I do have some of this on video-it was very dark out, so the video look about as smooth as a security camera, but I may post it sometime.

The next morning, after breakfast, we hiked a trail along Cuivre River that took us to Frenchman’s Bluff.

  Most of us walked the trail

Benjamin, inspecting one of the many cedar trees that would grow right on the side of the bluff…

…and showing Mom a fossil he found.

One of the bluffs:

Cuivre River down below

We went swimming and canoeing one more time and explored the lake’s dam before we packed up and headed home:

Hmm…may work well for a new blog banner…

 

Packing up: