Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Day 65 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAM!!!!!!!! HOPE THE DOGS DON’T EAT THE CAKE!!!!

We slept in this morning, all of us very tired after the long drive yesterday, worked on the blog which had fallen behind in New Orleans, caught up on paperwork, bills, texts & e-mails. Took a bike ride around the Park – there are plenty of fishermen and women here – they tend to be quiet, which is nice. We decided to try lunch at the lodge restaurant since we needed to stop at the camp store anyway to pick up a couple of items we were getting low on. The meal at the lodge was one of the worst meals we’d ever had. We’ve found it to be difficult to find food at most places in small towns that doesn’t contain meat and dairy products, but you’d think you would be okay to have a salad and/or some vegetables. I saw they had a salad bar, so I ordered that and a side of their “World Famous Onion Rings”; Rob ordered “Our Famous Teriyaki Vegetable Stir-Fry” and a side of mac & cheese. The salad had MAYBE five items on it, the lettuce and tomatoes and broccoli were old and wilty, the macaroni salad had a “mystery meat” in it, and the dressings were bottled Wishbone 1000 Island and Ranch. The World Famous Onion Rings were a huge order which is nice, but they lacked onions (like the salad bar) and were extremely greasy leaving a puddle on the plate. Ick. Rob’s mac & cheese appeared to be made from a Kraft Macaroni & Cheese mix. His Famous Teriyaki Vegetable Stir-Fry consisted of soft, overcooked veggies with no sauce that all looked very much like the frozen Bird’s Eye version which had been cooked for 1 hour in the microwave. We left there feeling like we’d never eat again, and in fact did not want dinner that night.

Got back to the RV and Rob discovered two ticks on him, one a larger one and the other a deer tick. We removed those and then I checked myself: two deer ticks.  Heading out for another Missouri campground tomorrow; we hope it’s a better Park.  The predicted rain did not arrive today; heavy rain is predicted for our drive tomorrow. Added Missouri to our camping map.

Montauk State Park, 345 County Road 6670, Salem, MO 65560, (877) 422-6766, “https://mostateparks.com/park/montauk-state-park”.  Older campground with some sites on River. Electric only, no water, no sewer (water and dumping available at Park). In a lovely setting but remote and a little hard to get to it. We might try it again but would not go later in the year because it was already pretty busy. Hiking, biking just thru the campground (which is large), no boating of any kind because this is a fishing “resort”. Frankly, we think we’d try other campgrounds in the Ozarks before coming back to this one.