After a fun Arkansas Travelers rally in Carthage, MO, we departed this morning for Hazlet State Park Campground at Carlyle Lake about 45 minutes east of St. Louis, MO.  I-44 from Carthage to near St. Louis was one of the best roads we’ve traveled—it was smooth, and the scenery was great.  We stopped at a rest stop just west of Rolla to find the cleanest restrooms we’ve ever seen in a rest area; the picnic shelters resembled the facade of old businesses, and were clean and neat.
Signage into Hazlet State Park was poor, and we were further disappointed to find that the camp sites had only electricity, NO water, and were very narrow.  After a skimpy dinner—we’re still on 500 calories a day—we walked the roads in our loop noting many families camping to celebrate Father’s Day as the campground was almost full.  Despite a lack of food and water, we settled in for the evening, relying on our sick water pump for washing dishes and flushing, and caught up on our reading.

Kay’s Take:  It was very hot today!  Humid, also.  Our Garmin took us thru the middle of St. Louis.
I should have overridden her and taken the southern loop around.  My friend, Lois, is gonna kill me for not calling – but I realized that she and Dick were probably in AR visiting her dad for Father’s Day.  The campground tonight was on a huge lake, Lake Carlyle, in IL.  It’s mostly a boating lake.  If we were to come here again, I would want to stay at the dam site campgrounds.  There was a beach there and it was much cleaner, I thought.  It was a corps campground.  I’m right in the middle of my book club book, South of Broad.  I absolutely love Pat Conroy’s writing!  His fluid use of language, descriptive imagery, and wonderful vocabulary is a delight to read.  His characters are always full of depth and inward reflection and this story isn’t as ‘dark’ in context as some of his others.  One of the joys of RVing  is I allow myself time to read – worthlessness at a new level! heheehe!