Columbia, MO
Monday, April 25
We’re off on an RV adventure! Our trip began this morning in southeast Nebraska and ended for the day in north-central Missouri. Rolling out for this road trip took some extra time this morning because we’re now pulling a Jeep Rubicon behind our motorhome. This will be different! We’ve never had a car with us while RVing — we’ve either driven our motorhome itself, or we’ve used electric bikes as our mode of transpiration. Now, we’ll have a small, independent vehicle to explore towns we visit. We also hope to use the Jeep for some trail riding across the country.
One of the many perks of a Class C Motorhome is the freedom “unplug and go.” There’s hardly any setup or tear-down needed when we arrive or depart a campsite. That’s one of our things Andi and I love about RVing — we are super flexible in traveling. Now, towing a vehicle will add a few steps to our process. It wasn’t terribly complicated to setup, but there were a lot of cords and bars to attach to each vehicle. “I hope this isn’t the last time we see this Jeep,” Andi said as we hooked it behind the RV.
We drove it around the block once, just to make sure everything was working. Tons of fellow RVers pull a small vehicle behind their motorhomes, so it’s obviously possible. It’s just going to take some time for us to get used to this new setup.
The drive through Missouri was uneventful. It was a little windy at times, but we had blue skies and relatively little traffic the entire way to Columbia, MO. We like watching the signs of spring unfold as we drive south. When we left last week our home in Wisconsin last week, it still looked like winter. Here in Missouri, trees are budding and the grass is green. Each mile we drove today revealed more and more colors of spring.
Andi picked Finger Lakes State Park as a place to stay for the night. The beauty of traveling this time of year is that campgrounds are open, but there are no people! Aside from a handful of fishermen, we had the entire place to ourselves.
Finger Lakes State Park offers several recreational activities like fishing, canoeing and ORV trail riding. Unfortunately, Jeeps aren’t allowed on their trails. Andi and I decided to rent a canoe for the afternoon and explore the park by water. “Well, it’s a little cold out there,” the park ranger told Andi when he went inside the office to rent a canoe and paddles. Not for us, Wisconsinites! Fifty-two degrees and sunny felt pretty amazing to us.
The four of us pushed off in our canoe from the boat landing and paddled through a series of interconnected channels throughout the park. It was beautiful! Small, green leaves were budding on trees all around us with pops of bright pinkish-purple trees dispersed between them. A quick Google search told us the trees are called Eastern Redbuds and super common all over Missouri. They were so pretty.
Tory, Aden, Andi and I had so much fun paddling around for a few hours. It felt amazing to be outside on the water again & we got a good arm workout in, too! We saw geese, turtles, hawks, birds and fish in and around the lake.
Afterwards, we returned our paddles and lifejackets to the front office and headed back to our campsite. Aden wanted to check out the playground, so the four of us walked over there for a bit. An empty state park means there weren’t any other kids there for Tory and Aden to play with, but luckily they always have each other.
We heated up leftover sloppy joe meat in the microwave and served it with broccoli for dinner. Then we watched an episode of Our National Parks on Netflix together before bedtime.
It always takes us a few days to settle into RV life again & this trip won’t be any different. We’ll find our groove attaching the Jeep to the RV and living together in close quarters again. One thing’s for sure, we’ll make awesome memories along the way.
