For those of you that know us, you know that we are planners. We take our time, are organized and when we plan a trip, we PLAN a trip, usually down to the half hour. Friday afternoon, Emmy called me a work and said, "Hey, I have a crazy idea, let's go down to Lake of the Ozarks this weekend. Spend a night, shop, just get away for a day or two." After some quick research into hotels, I found a gem (seriously) and we were on our way Saturday morning. Now, we had to convince Aidan that it was OK to miss soccer. He loves soccer and so do we, but doing something like this together as a family, and the things that we did, well won out at least this time. :)
So off we went on our 2.5 hour journey to Osage Beach, Missouri which is roughly southwest from where we live on the Lake of the Ozarks, which is a huge meandering man-made lake that was built when the Corps of Engineers dammed up a river that runs through the region. It's a beautiful place that was made even better by being there during off-season and having great warm weather!
After a few hours of shopping at the outlets, we headed over to Miner Mike's, which is this massive games place for some gaming.
Playing Fruit Ninja (have to slice the fruit with your fingers)
He did good, won nearly 30 tix!
All of us concentrating hard playing the Trucker game.
For dinner I looked up a place online that was on the lake called Shorty Pants. It was OK, luckily there were lots of fish to feed so the boys had a distraction before our food came!
Looking out on the lake from the marina at Shorty Pants.
Fishy boys!
The Fam at the lake.
It was then back to the hotel and swimming and the boys were down by the normal bedtime while Mommy and I shared a glass of wine in the dark watching "The Hangover" on my iPod....Classic!
This morning we were up early and headed to a Missouri State Park called, Ha Ha Tonka State Park. We didn't get the 411 on Ha Ha Tonka, but you have to think that it was named after some sort of Native American tribe or person, which is cool. But...the cooler thing about this park was a mansion/castle that was built in the early 1900s then burned down in 1942 and left for us to explore. It was a MAJOR mansion complete with a stable house, carriage house and a water tower. The pictures we got there were amazing....without further ado....
This is from the top of the bluff looking back at the Lake of the Ozarks.
For those interested in the story, click on the picture and read closely. Very amazing!!! Look at those pictures, that place was so elegant!
It's us!
There are several springs that feed the lake, this is one....you'll see it again later :)
The entrance to the Castle
I kinda got carried away with some architectural photography, so bear with me...or thoroughly enjoy it as we did!
I like this last one as the shadows make an inverted castle projected onto a crumbling.
A big guy
The fam at the castle, look at that beautiful blue sky!!
Happy Castle Explorers!
The Christmas Card Shot of the Year!
Another great one of this beautiful lake.
Today was just a great, great day. The park had lots of trails, most of which were made with wood planks like this so the boys were LOVING walking along all those bridges, it was so darn fun.
Here's the water tower that was built to store water from the spring below (that you'll see momentarily). Too bad it was built about a half a mile from the castle, rendering it useless during the fire :(
The area has a ton of caves, and when a cave collapses, it's known as a sinkhole (read above about what the caves were used for!) and looks like this:
There were a few spots off the beaten trail that we actually walked on a hiking path, and you know we couldn't let go an great "Kodak" moment with the big guys!
Love it, gosh I wish we could keep them like this forever.
Our next task was to take 316, yes, it actually counts them for you, steps all the way down to the bottom of the bluff to the natural spring I mentioned earlier. Here's the castle from below.
The natural spring. At 58 degrees, not something you'd want to jump right in, but the signs says it provides 48 million gallons of water to the lake per day!
Some warn out buggers after taking about 200 of the steps back to the top!
Mr. Slick Rick walking with his hands in his pockets!
It was quite windy on top of the bluff, hence the wings and winglets came out.
After a great lunch at Lil Rizzo's, we decided to take in some mini-golf. Well, we lucked out again, it was all free with food provided sponsored by the local grocery store down there! Boo yah!
Everyone played great and had a fun time!
They even got pirate hats and flags!
So, all in all, another great trip. Man, can we do vacations....so much fun and so relaxing. Grammy's and Grandpas, this would be a fun trip for us to do together next year during a weekend when you come. The place we stayed is a little "ma and pop" but was nice. What do ya think?
That's all from here, thanks for reading! Have a great night!
Go Cardinals!!
Ty, Emmy, Aidan and Ethan
