we packed up from effigy mounds, full of vim and vigor and excitement to get on the road of our next adventure, and started the drive to mark twain lake in monroe county missouri. the drives themselves, of increasing lengths between sites, became fugue portals—we could all feel the tension of the next potential, sitting and waiting for the wormhole to be cleared.

arriving at the site itself i was a little disappointed in the fire grate, and then the fire policy. this is where some of the camping things started to come off the wheels because these inconveniences met a very hard wall of being tired of cooking over a fire anyways. i already wasn’t in the energy to figure out how to make this shoddier fire pit work for us, and then found out gathering wood from the woods was prohibited, and you could only buy firewood from the camp host. at this point, we just went to the lake.

the absolute best decision i made here was choosing the site closest to the lake (despite how confusing the site maps became as we moved farther south, a rule with no exceptions) and we could scramble down a rocky hill of a beach to a vast body of water we had all to ourselves. in fact, upon reaching said beach, we had the distinct recognition that this is the first time we’d really been alone in weeks (months even). we’re from a rural area on the east coast originally, and hadn’t realized how much we missed the privacy, but this place had that same feeling of freedom. being able to swim and splash and yell and tap into that pure feral nature with our masks left behind felt like the biggest reward for our efforts.

the lake itself held such a big appeal, that outside of the laundry we had to go do and one delicious meal at a country buffet, we spent our time in the cold water. there were more mark twain historical sites to visit, but we felt the most return on our investment with the huge body of water, not the man-made shrines to his thoughtful legacy.

this is also where i started to run into stress around planning our next step (stress and planning through the unknown spread shown above lol), so the water was helpful for that as well! our next stop was louisiana, but the state parks were not options in the way i had thought based on our previous experiences. not only were they lacking in amenities, but apparently many of them have been damaged for years and not repaired, and the state parks website made all of this information very hard to find. luckily i had time and finally made it through enough “optimized” searches to find a safe, private, novel place to camp.

and boone got a new chance to do his favorite meme with new surprise filters before we headed on 🤭