Lake of the Ozarks

Chris had part of Labor Day weekend off, and we thought it would be fun to head out of town for a couple of days. We couldn't decide where, though. We contemplated Omaha (their zoo is supposed to be great) or St. Louis but wanted to be outdoors since the weather was supposed to be nice, and when I say nice I mean only in the upper 70s, amazing for this time of year!

We thought about hunting for mozarkite (the offical rock of Missouri and probably the only one worth collecting), but the one and only location to gather (in a tiny town called Lincoln) was closed for the weekend.

So at noon on Friday we finally chose Lake of the Ozarks. It's been a long time since we've been there, don't ask me why we haven't gone there more often, I don't know. If you're not from this area, Lake of the Ozarks is beautiful--rolling hills, trees in every direction, I just love it. Kansas City has a lot of the same characteristics, especially on the Missouri side where we used to live. Our development in KS in on what used to be farmland so it lacks the mature trees I enjoyed while living in Missouri (how I miss the giant oak and maples in my old backyard!!).

We scrambled to pack and make reservations and were off after the kids got out of school. Had we thought about all the traffic headed in that direction for the holiday weekend we would have pulled the kids out of school early. Oh well, we still got there in good time, it's only about 2 1/2 hours from our house.

We thought it would be fun to explore the caves around the area. Missouri has a huge cave system, there are at least 6,000 known caves in the state. Four large ones are by Lake of the Ozarks. Have you ever been in a cave? There was a great cave by BYU called the Nutty Putty Cave. A friend of a friend had splunking equipment so we went there a couple of times. At one part of the cave you had to crawl through a small space called the birth canal that opened up into a large room, I remember the cave being so dark that if you turned off your light it was absolutely pitch black. I loved it.

We started with Ozarka cave which is run by the National Park Service.

Abs looks so grown up!
Trying to keep the cave as natural as possible, the park service hasn't lit the cave at all. Everyone held lanterns to light their way. The great part of this was that you really got the feeling of being in a cave and we were able to see a few bats and other animals.

We were at the back of the line most of the time with Lisi's little legs, and when you looked back into the cave without any light it was pretty cool. I felt like Tom Sawyer.
Lake of the Ozarks has really changed since we were there last. We looked for some of the places we'd been before, but they were gone. But we certainly had a lot of chain restaurants to chose from for lunch:)

Afterwards we went to Bridal Cave, a touristy cave right off the lake. Talk about the total opposite experience, we went from a cave whose mantra was "save the bats" to one where comments like "look at the rock that looks like the Energizer bunny" were the norm. It was well lit, the advantage being that we could easily see the incredible rock formations, the kids really enjoyed it. We're glad we did the national park one first, though, the kids wouldn't have been very impressed after the 2nd cave!

Yah, it's pretty amazing.

Looking up at the ceiling. I think the guide said we were about 100 feet underground??

The kids fed huge catfish right off the dock.

We spent a couple of hours playing at the lake. Abs and Lisi had a grand time, Kierst for some strange reason has decided that lakes aren't her favorite. I think it's time to take her camping and toughen her up a little:) Chris is, of course, looking for rocksThere's a huge outlet mall at Osage Beach (like the one in Destin) and in the evening we wandered through a few shops. I think this was one of Kierst's favorite things to do. Should I be scared? She's turning into a teenager!!

Sunday we drove back. We stopped at a lake near Clinton, Mo., for lunch. The playground was completely shaded by trees and so the kids gathered acorns and pecans.

We passed through a tiny town called Tightwad, population 200?? or something like that. We had to laugh at this place:

I don't think we'll stay away from the lake as long as we did before. We're looking at condos on the lake with fishing and beaches, I think we'll go back next year!