We had to take a little break from all of our camping fun to spend some time at the lake. Starting in June, the temperatures stayed over 100 degrees. Even with the air conditioner in my little pop-up, I'm just not that tough. Weekends at the house on the lake, swimming and boating beat out camping. Especially since there was a burn ban, too. Who can camp without a fire?
Finally, the first weekend in October the weather looked good. 80's in the daytime and 50's at night. Perfect. On short notice, we decided to head back to Osage Hills State Park. The last time we were here, it was only for an afternoon and there was much we didn't see.
Since our last adventure, we added this cool screen porch to the camper. It seemed to be the perfect "kitchen". My stove is inside, but I set up the cooler, the table with all the food on it and organized it all out there, freeing up some space inside. It also was a great place to put the dog's kennel so she could sleep out there at night.
We decided to take a hike around the lake. There were some beautiful views from the top of several hills. We had a picnic on our hike and then things got a little tricky. It got hot and the trails are not hiked very often and not marked well. A 1 mile hike turned into a very whiney 4 mile hike. We did finally make it back to camp. My kids thought it was intentional torture.
After dinner, some fun around the campfire and marshmallows it was time to go to bed. The kids take turns each trip on who gets the pop-out bed and who gets the smaller one where the table is. P and I get the King size pop-out bed on the other end. I have a little trouble sleeping with all of the critter sounds outside so I use earplugs. Because of this, I didn't initially hear all of the comotion until I started feeling the camper shaking from the kids bouncing around from window to window squeeling about the racoon that was in the screen porch. I jumped up to see that what we thought was a secured screen porch had been breeched by a small racoon that after feasting on some of our delicacies, could not figure out how to get back out. Our Golden Retreiver ( who isn't much of an outdoorsy kind of girl) didn't make a peep. She was curled in a tight little ball in the back of her nylon zip up kennel. She was terrified. As was the racoon that kept climbing on her kennel then jumping onto the wall of the screen porch. We had to get it out before it broke in to the kennel and hurt the dog and completely destroyed the new screens!
It was a completely redneck affair and I so wish I had my camera out from the start. P was in the porch in a t-shirt and boxers trying to unzip the door and shoo the little coon with a broom. Kids screaming all the while. I'm sure by now the whole park was up. We never saw it leave, but all was quiet. We resecured the base, zipped up the door, moved all the food and the dog inside. Back to bed. M was completely freaked out and then yelled that it was still in there! Looking out her window you could see that it hadn't left, but rather crawled up between the screen and the shade that was rolled down. It was hanging very quietly trying to figure its next move I'm sure.
Something had to be done. We went back out, unzipped the door and beat the sides of the porch until it finally let go and took off at a full run. He didn't come back. The next morning we were sharing our adventure with the park ranger who said the racoons are so smart (and have opposable thumbs) that they will actually drag off coolers into the woods to scavenge. They also had a racoon UNZIP a tent the weekend before and stroll right in to check out the food inside. Apparently the wife was not one bit happy....I wouldn't be either! M now has a very unhealthy fear of our little ring tailed friends.
It was a long night. Thankfully, followed by a beautiful fall morning with pancakes, sausage and biscuits over the campfire.
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