Just some Random Stuff

It has been a very enjoyable, relaxing week here at the Damsite Campground by the lake in SW Missouri.  Wonderful location, and the weather has been great.  It rained one night early in our visit, with considerable wind, then a day or 2 of heat with humidity (makes you appreciate electricity and A/C!) but has been ideal since - temps in the mid 80's and cooling at night.  Campfires most nights.

This campground is full on the weekends, has now thinned out to about 20 percent of the sites occupied.  Grass everywhere, you can park your boat right on the shore within yards of your camper.  Handy.  Swimming, fishing, kayaking (the camp hosts offered their 2-man for our use), even a sailboat out yesterday.

Dump station is busy, of course, on Sunday afternoon, but little wait time.  Lorna did get a kick out of this post she came across on a "Camping" website:

Well...this is funny, now...being a newbie tt owner, but long time tent camper, I decided to get some practice today by taking my camper to a local RV park. When I took it out for the first time and did my first time dump station I was really nervous and there was a long line behind me. When I got it home my black tank said it was still 2/3rds full. I was bummed. So today I took it just to dump it and take it on the expressway for the first time so I can be prepared for my first 4 hr trip by myself to top of Michigan in a few weeks. It had a nice dump station that didn’t smell bad and not busy so I could take my time. Everything is flushed out and clear flowing and now low. Well on way home I looked at my arm and it looked like a chunck of poop was on it. I started screaming (my 18 year old son was with me to learn) and gagging. Here I am hauling my 38ft camper and having a poop on my pants and arm while trying my best to remain calm. By the way, the camper pulls a lot nicer with some weight in it. So I finally get to pull over in a school parking lot and jump out so I can find my bottle of Clorox wipes in my storage compartment and let myself freak out. Well...upon better inspection...I realized my husband was eating a Little Debbies brownie yesterday and didn’t finish it and stuck it in my door. (He will hear about that later) I was putting my pop in the door and it crushed it and when I lifted my pop out it stuck to the bottom all mushy and fell in my lap and I didn’t realize it. My son and I laughed so hard! Going to make sure to write that in our travel journal! Hahaha! 

Camping Quarters

No, not the rig.  The coins we mentioned in "Hoarding Quarters" a couple months ago.  Funny that it has come to pass:  Quarters are hard to find.  Really!  How does this happen in America?!  Laundromat in Hermitage runs only on quarters, but change machine is broke (and/or broken).  And banks, I'm told, won't provide quarters to customers, including the grocery store.  So you go to the car wash - which turns out to be owned by the laundry guy - to get quarters.  Worked great for awhile, but the mafia has moved in and controlled the market (I guess), by draining that supply.  Poor owner.

Upside?  Eventually they will have to upgrade to currency/card devices for both businesses.  Expensive to convert, but it does make sense, I think.

Side Note

Why do we even HAVE pennies and nickles anymore??  Surely Walmart could figure out a way to price everything to a tenth of a dollar.  And so with other retailers.  Are you really gonna go broke because you missed out on a few pennies?  They'd save enough in the handling that prices generally should drop.  And gas stations could drop the .9 BS.  Seems like that has run it's course.  

"Honey, I bought groceries today and it cost twelve dollars and 40 cents."

"Filled the tank today at $ 1.90 per gallon.  Cost me $24.50.  If I got another drop of gas it would have been $24.60".  No big deal.  Taxes in increments of a tenth of a dollar.  (Or you could eliminate pennies and dimes, similar benefit)

We could make this work.  

Even in America!

Dining

It's apparent at first glance that food is readily available in Missouri.  And some of it is really good.  Like the diner in Weaubleau just west of Wheatland.  Burgers, reubens, onion rings and fries, down-home good.  OK:  It's pronounced "wahblow", evidently.

According to our waitress, anyway.  Full disclosure:  It's a busy place, not a mask in the building.  Nobody died there on that day.

In the Lake of the Ozarks area we ate at a mexican restaurant (El Charco Azul - Osage Beach).  Again very good (rellenos) meal, and friendly wait staff.

The waitress!

Great service.  Host had the only mask we saw.  Just the way it is, I guess.

Then for a dinner one day down by Urbana, as we entered an old restaurant just about everyone in the place looked at us with that "Oh poor people - they must survive on chicken necks and celery" look.  I guess we looked at them thinking something like OMG! they ARE bigger in MO.  I had all-you-can-eat Shrimp and ribs and onion rings.  Guarantee I was the one person in the building that ate just one serving.  Good food, but you only need so much.  Lorna had the pork tender-loin special.  Pretty sure it was none of the three (pork, tender, or special).  But good potatoes & gravy.

As we ate, an older lady sat and smoked at a table at the edge of the room.  No masks anywhere.  Not even oxygen.  But it made me recall:  Remember when the first words out of a restaurant hostess' mouth were "smoking or Non"!!  Been a while.  Anyway, we survived, and I have to say that the folks in the place were really friendly.

Guess we're going to the "antique" stores today.  Yippee!!

Back to racing in a couple days.

D & L