Days 123 & 124: Montauk State Park, MO

Alea had a nice, short day's ride of 32 miles to get here yesterday.  Most of it was with a wide shoulder (except the last few miles with no shoulder), before we stopped at a crossroads, piled her bike in the van and drove to the campground.

One of the Montauk Springs.

We are camped at Montauk State Park ($23, power [50 amp] and showers) for two nights.  We could have saved $2 per night in a 30 amp site, but then the bathrooms would have been twice as far away.  We figure it is worth the extra $2 even though we can't use the extra power.

We opted to stay here two nights to hopefully get things timed right for the weekend.  We know that we will need to stay at private campgrounds the next two nights, and generally getting a campsite on a Friday or Saturday does not present the same sort of problems in a private campground that we sometimes encounter in public campgrounds (they aren't as likely to fill up).  So by Sunday, when we start hitting public campgrounds again, we should be able to get in without making reservations.

In stark contrast to last night's campground, this place is absolutely packed.  We just barely managed to get the last first come, first served campsite with power, though there were a few primitive sites still available.  But with the heat and humidity, power is essential to being able to sleep well at night.

At least the weather has been nice enough that Lana gets to play in the river from time to time, and we were able to see Montauk Spring and explore the park a bit.

The big attraction her at the park is the fact that they stock the river with trout.  So they have large fish rearing ponds here, which we were able to inspect up close.  Lana was quite perplexed, having never seen water so densely packed with fish before.  And when we tossed in some fish food (they have dispensers for just that purpose), she was quite intrigued by the fish jumping out of the water in their attempt to get to the food before it was gone.