It's Summertime!

It's been a bit since I have blogged-so I will try to catch up!  I had been so super busy at the bed and breakfast, that I was dreaming of a little get away.  Finally, after 2 months straight of multiple room customers, I got the chance!  I am not complaining of being too busy at the b and b, just saying that I was super swamped and couldn't get away.  Being busy for that long is definitely a good thing!  The July heat and the flooding issues have really deterred customers from following through on their bookings, so that gave me the little break I needed to get away (actually, a couple of times).  The first trip was a floating and camping trip with my friend Bee.  We have done this I think a total of 4 times in the last two years.  We have gone to Steeleville and floated on the Meramac, to Bennett Springs and floated on the Niangua, and one camping trip to the Lake of the Ozarks.  No floating on that trip, but camping anyway!  This time we chose Steeleville again, but at a different campground, and on a different river.  We stayed and Huzzah Valley Campground, and did a 6 mile float on the Huzzah River.  We weren't too sure about this trip, because our other one to Steeleville wasn't super impressive.  We did not like the Meramac River, because it was very muddy, we saw several snakes, and she is nervous about reports of drownings, etc.  I realize the other rivers have snakes too, but in my opinion, if you don't see them, then they aren't there!  Usually this trick works to calm my mind on the subject.  Anyway, we found the campground, and we were pleasantly surprised.  It was very well kept, and our campsite was directly along the river.  It was very pretty.  We set up our campsite, and then of course had to go get the last of our supplies, esp. wine coolers.  We had so much fun walking in the river, rock hunting, we played several games of ladder golf, read some magazines, enjoyed our hot dog roast and drinkies, and relaxed around the campfire...UNTIL it got dark, and then the critters come out.  We had an unfortunate incident with a killer racoon on one of our previous trips, so we get a little jumpy after dark.  Everything was fine until we heard a couple of very big splashes in the river.  We weren't messing around with that, so after shining our flashlights for a while, and seeing 2 sets of eyes, we freaked out and went to our tents.  In our haste, I forgot to put away the box of tabasco flavored Cheez Its.  We use these with cream cheese and pepper jelly.  You laugh, but it is actually very good-you should try it.  I realized this about 3:30 am when I finally talked myself into braving getting out of my tent and sneaking away to the bathroom.  Then I hurried back to the tent and couldn't sleep because of God knows what is out there!  In the morning, I went right away to put the crackers away, but they were gone-the whole box and all!  I guess whichever critter ran off with them got a surprise when they tore into them!  I would have liked to have seen that!!!  We gathered ourselves, and after a wonderful breakfast of fruit and doughnuts, we were off for our rafting adventure.  The water was very clear and everything was so pretty.  We started out in the water by getting rammed into by two other rafts in which the operators didn't know how to control them yet, almost getting smacked in the head by an oar, etc.  We got away from them and spent most of the day in our own little world. We would row for a while, talk, giggle, etc.  Then we would go to the closest beach and swim a bit, have a snack, then row some more.  We found this section that wasn't too deep, but had a pretty good current going, so we floated on our backs to the end of the beach, got out and did it all over again.  We did this for at least an hour, and felt like we had our own 6 Flags type of ride!  All was good for the rest of the float until we got to the end.  We managed to get ourselves into a pretty strong current, and Bee lost her shoe.  I started to go after it for her, but not being able to see around the corner, and the thought of missing our ride deterred me.  She just had to deal with being the one shoe wonder for the rest of the afternoon!  We are going back soon, but the next time we will be there for 2 nights!  Maybe we should bring an animal trap with us?