Sunday, May 4, 2008

LAKE OF THE OZARKS: I Never Dreamed Missouri Would Be This Beautiful

Are ponchos still in style? If not, I'm in big trouble!
On Easter Sunday Sam surprised me with a weekend get-away to Lake of the Ozarks, which is in central Missouri. We took our little vacation last weekend. We had heard it was beautiful down there, but I never dreamed it would be this beautiful.
One of my favorite parts of the weekend was going to Ha Ha Tonka Stake Park and hiking to the castle ruins. Who would have thought Missouri would have castle ruins? I seriously felt like we were in Scotland or something. In the picture above you can kind of see the top of the castle above the trees.










The bluffs surrounding the castle were too steep to hike on, so the state park built these stairs to traverse the park. Its a little different than hiking in Utah and Idaho, but I definitely liked it!


Its kinda hard to tell in this picture, but this is a natural bridge that we hiked to.


Look at how pretty this is! I never would have thought I would see this kind of scenery in the Midwest.

Below are some pictures of our tour of the Ozark Caverns. (I think that is what they were called.)









We spent one afternoon on our mountain bikes. I am by no means a brave person, especially on a bike, so this trail we did was a bit of a stretch for me. Sam was very proud of me. Heck, I was very proud of myself!

This little dip was a lot steeper and scarier in real life than it shows in these pictures.

This was my attempt to cross a decent sized stream. What the picture doesn't show is that half-way across I got nervous, stopped pedaling, lost balance, and got my feet very wet.



We were both a little dirty when it was all said and done.







I know you're supposed to save the best for last, but this is probably the least exciting of our pics. My mom wanted to see a picture of where we stayed - so this one is for you Mom! We love you!