Tuesday, September 30 through October 1, 2025
We left Poplar Bluff around 0900. We’ve not been to the Lake of the Ozarks so this is a great time to visit. We’re not in a hurry as check in time is1500 hours at Lake of the Ozarks State Park and we are maybe 5 or 5 ½ hours away. For some reason Mr. Garmin and Miss Smarty Pants cell phone can’t find the state park, only the state recreation area. As we are not familiar with the lake’s 1100 mile shore line nor it’s amenities we go with Jil’s mapping system. Mr. Garmin took itself out of the mapping game and for some reason is sulking.
We head out on nice four lane US 65 for quite a few miles. If we stayed on this highway we’d wind up in Springfield MO; the lake is quite a bit north of Springfield so we’ll be getting off US 65 in favor of other highways. That turns out to be our downfall. Jil’s phone is not set up for big rigs so it will take us willy nilly all over the countryside at its every whim.
The route it has us following today is no exception. You have a sneaky suspicion of things to come when it has us turn off onto a very narrow country road- complete with nary a soft shoulder and a deep ditch on either side of the road and oncoming semis who are not afraid to hog the road. After 20-30 miles of that the phone’s map has us turn onto an even narrower road to head 90 degrees from the original course. I tell Jil that her smarty pants phone instructions can’t be right as the campground we are going to accepts very large motorhomes and trailers and this road just isn’t built for big rigs. But we are committed.
The next country road we turn onto dead ends so we turn right at the T intersection. Not far down this road 25 mph speed limit signs pop up…… and lookie here, the road turns to gravel. Well, ga-olly! The road now is a lane and a half wide and gravel…….. and then again becomes paved with asphalt. There’s hope as we pass an RV Park. Jils says “how did those RV’s get in here” and I says “Not the way we came”. Jil now says we are to ride a bicycle path for a tenth of mile. How in the heck are we gonna travel down a bicycle path with a Class A motorhome. Well it turns out the bicycle path is where you’d expect to have one- along side a road. We cross I-44………….
So it goes for many, many miles. We spend a lot of time on Country Road K. We finally arrive at Lake of the Ozarks Recreation Area, the place Miss Smarty Pants takes us and Mr. Garmin concurs. Jil says follow the road for two miles so we follow the road for maybe 6 miles and arrive at a very small boat marina and a 12 site primitive campground. Uh, this may be the wrong location as our site number is 234 and has full hookups. So out we go six miles to the main road, stopping to reconnoiter.We are both beat and flummoxed as to why both of our mapping systems can’t find the state park. Jil finds the state park on her phone map by typing in “campgrounds” and Lake of the Ozarks State Park is the first to pop up. Jil says “it’s 22 miles away and I’m not gonna go any farther”. I says “what’s our choice?….. So clearer heads prevail and suggest that we continue to the park, so we did.
The dotted lines means Miss Smarty Pants found the state park but doen’t know how to get there. Notice we’d have to ford the lake…….
We arrived at the park two hours later than anticipated due to bad routing and really bad routing. The state park is really nice. Most of the sites are in trees and well laid out. Our site is in a new part of the park down by the lake. It’s so new it doesn’t have any trees planted yet which is OK, the location is great and we have full hookups.
Day Two: We are still tuckered out from that drive yesterday but we summon up enough energy to visit part of Osage Beach(4637 souls).This city plays much larger than 4637 people as its a very popular vacation area. There are hotels everywhere, boat rentals are more prevalent than auto rentals.
Early Morning Photos from Our Campground
A little history: Osage Beach was founded in 1886 as Zebra before being renamed as Osage Beach in 1935. Osage Beach was incorporated in 1959.When the Lake of the Ozarks was created, it caused the flooding of much of Zebra. Most of the town’s merchants chose not to establish new locations.
We have need for a few provisions. Jil maps out a grocery store call HyVee. I envision a small local store. Wrongo cowboy, this market is HUGE! We enter the store and walk past 10 rows of every kind and brand of liquor, wine, beer known to mankind. Beyond that is every kind of cheese known to man. I look down the cross isle and can’t see the end of the store. This place is incredible. They not only have the product you want but 10 more just like it. The butcher counter has 10 flavors of bratwurst- I thought there was only one! We find the groceries that we came for but can’t resist walking through the entire store just to take in its magnificence.
We end our two night stay here lookiing forward to our next stop. (We have our fingers crossed that map directions are better and roads are smooth and wide)
Travel With Jil and Mike 