Westward Ho trip: Boonville Missouri

On day two of my Westward Ho trip,  I get up and take a short drive to Boonsville, Missouri and check out its historic district. It’s an interesting little town with some nice architecture. 

I manage to spend a few hours taking photos of the town, mostly at the visitor center which is in an old railway depot. Always a sucker for those.  

  

I stroll up and down a few streets admiring how buildings and houses USED to be built. There are quite a few interesting buildings and a cool bridge which seemed to be being repaired. 

Small towns always seem to have some quirky little thing or two.

I'm guessing they didn't have to pay too much attention to that sign:

I stop at a little corner café and snarf down a tasty breakfast before heading back to my truck.

After breakfast I hit the road and head West again.

Travels with Sierra; Hit the Road Jack

Hit the road, Jack 

(yes, it's a Ray Charles reference)

I throw the last minute items into the truck. Everything is packed...I hope. 

It's the first day of my "Westward Ho "trip. I head out of Ohio on Interstate 70. I run into slow moving traffic before I even hit the state line. I have gone a grand total of about 30 miles.

Two lines of traffic are driving at almost 63 when the limit is 70. If it were just a few cars poking along, I would weave my way through traffic until I passed the morons that are holding everyone up. But I can’t even see the front of the line. 

After a few miles of this, with nobody passing anyone, it starts to rain. So, naturally, everyone slows down to under 60 mph. Oh, Look! A Cracker Barrel! I whip off the poky puppy highway and head for the parking lot. I get out of my car and head for the door in a steady rain.

Before you can say half-blind granny drivers slow poking in the rain, I have my breakfast. Mommas' Pancake breakfast to be exact. I don’t know what it is about Cracker Barrel, but they have the best orange juice. The pancakes always have a slight crunchy edge that is very tasty.

When I am done, I head back out to the truck.  

The rain has stopped and the sun is shining. Traffic is back to moving at its normal highway speeds and the slow poke parade is nowhere in sight.

Back on the road again! (In case you missed this musical reference; Canned Heat about 1968)

I drive to Whetstone creek conservation area near Williamsburg, Missouri. 

This is to be my first boondock campsite for the trip.

As I pull into this area I can hear giant horse flies attacking the truck.Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

Not a good sign for camping!

The area is quite lovely. 

A very well maintained gravel road leads into the park. There are several lakes and ponds. They all look like good fishing sites. I suddenly wish I had figured out how to fit a Kayak in the truck.

While the campground is not much more than a parking lot with some picnic tables and fire rings, It will do. The fact that it is free makes it that much better. 

I check out the pit toilets and decide that is not a place I would want to sit for even the shortest amount of time. It is dirty and I can see about 10,000 mosquitoes clinging to the side of the chute. I am not gonna be sitting, or shitting, down that chute. 

I drive around taking photos of the setting sun and then settle in for the night. 

It takes a while for the truck to cool down. But when it does I get a fairly good nights sleep and don’t hear the bugs anymore. 

The morning is very chilly so I get up early and hit the road…avoiding the pit toilets.

Next blog; Booneville and Ogalla.

Prelude. Travels with Sierra, or the Big Red Beast.

One of my ideas of a fun trip is to throw some camp gear and a mattress in the back of my pickup truck and boon dock camp as much as possible, taking copious photographs along the way. 

Boon dockings governmental technical term is dispersed camping. It is basically camping in free sites provided by the National Forest and the Bureau of Land Management. Most of these sites are nothing more than a clearing for parking or setting up a tent. No water. No electricity. No maids or room service. And no fees to stay. Quite a few of them are remote and have wonderful views of spectacular scenery. 

There are a lot of these West of the Mississippi.  East of the great Muddy, they are mostly called Walmart parking lots. 

My lovely wife is not much of a camper, preferring to stay in Hyatt Regency’s, or similar accommodations. Because of this, my manly camping trips become solo events. This usually works out for the best as I tend to wake up at dawn and take “100 pictures of the same damn thing”. Her words. 

After I have spent an allotted time wandering amongst the scenery and filling up my cameras SD card(s), we usually meet up and complete the trip staying at hotels, where our effective starting time changes to about 10 AM, and nice restaurants replace beef jerky and crackers.

This series of blogs is about the first part of a recent excursion to Wyoming; the driving, and the manly, boondock camping part.

To get started, let me share the basics of my tiny hotel on wheels, also known as the Big Red Beast. Here are a few pics showing how everything is crammed into the back of my 2013 GMC Sierra Pickup truck:

The view from the back of the truck:

The view from the side:

 

 My wife's suitcases and some extra bedding are hidden under the bed platform.

The front is also fairly well crammed with "stuff":

All the while I am loading up the gear, Peter Paul and Mary’s version of “Leaving on a Jet plane” keeps running through my mind; “My bags are packed and I’m ready to go…”

Next blog; Heading out of the Big Oh-hi-Oh.

What is your idea of an "ideal" trip?