Late Summer Trip to Minnesota/Michigan

Saturday Aug 18, 2023 - Kevin’s college friends planned a reunion near Rolla so we decided to leave from Missouri for our trip to Minnesota/Michigan.  They spent the weekend at Hanover Farms drinking beer and catching up and I spent the weekend catching up with Bob, helping Deb make salsa, fishing with Chuck.  

Early birthday celebration. Kev loves the new fishing shirt from Bob

Deb has lots of tomatoes for us to eat 😋

Late night fish on the lake

Chuck helped me with my little bass

Nice sunset

Lots of chopping for salsa

Pretty colors

Deb’s garden

Monday Aug 20, 2023 - Monday morning I picked up Kev and we drove 4.5 hours to Lacey Keosagua State Park in Iowa.  It was HOT there but luckily we had electricity so we could run our air conditioning. We were happy to meet up with Aunt Gerry and Uncle Gene.  It’s been a whole year since we last camped with them in Alaska

On the road again

Cute Herman, MO city hall in the middle of the road

Kev’s happy that Deb sent a bunch of tomatoes for him

and banana pudding for his birthday

Good night

Tuesday Aug 22, 2023 - We had another hot day, so we hiked to Lake Keosagua to cool off. It was about a mile hike from the campground to the beach and a perfect place for a quick swim.

Nice hike to the beach

Tubes for floating

the beach was pretty empty (us and a family of 5)

View of the lake/beach

Cheers to camping with the Diullos

Our campsite at a Keosagua SP

Wednesday Aug 23, 2023 - Today was a 5 hour drive to our next campground, Whitewater State Park in Minnesota. It was a pretty drive through lots and lots of corn. 

Not a great placement for this bench (at the camp dump station!  It doesn't look like it's been used very often)

Porch swings in the town of Keosagua with a view of the Des Moines River

An interesting corn-eating raccoon totem pole at a local city park

Kev got Mirabelle to go through the tube, she was much more graceful than him

Corn as far as you can see

Slicing peaches for birthday cobbler

We baked the peach cobbler in the crock pot

Thursday, Aug 24, 2023 - it’s Kev’s birthday! 🥳 It’s not as hot as yesterday but still a little sticky, so we packed  a lunch and went to the whitewater river beach and did a hike to chimney rock

Good morning

Breakfast prep

We finally tried out the travel waffle iron the girls got us for Christmas 

Beautiful yummy Birthday waffles and scrambled eggs

Mirabelle’s favorite spot 

Granary behind veterans park

Moose on the roof

A walk through St Charles

At Whitewater State Park we went for a hike up a lot of stairs to see Chimney Rock

Pretty bridge over the whitewater river

The sweat-bee slayer

Our campsite at Whitewater state park

Kev’s thanksgiving in august turkey dinner. Nice celebration for Kev’s birthday and Gerry & Gene’s anniversary