There's No Place Like Home

We are home from four days of camping at Johnson's Shut-In's State Park. It was a hot weekend. The temperatures were 95 with a heat index in the 1000's. Actually it was in the low one hundreds. We stayed inside during the heat of the day. It rained on Saturday night and it cooled off, so we walked all over and met lots of people. We still thought we were dying though after our morning walk. It was nice and cool inside, but you can't tell it by looking at us.

Daddy was excited to camp here because it is a brand new campground. The original campground was destroyed on December 14, 2005 when the Taum Sauk Reservoir collapsed and 1.3 million gallons of water swept through the park destroying it. They moved the campground to a new location. It is actually a few miles from the original site on a different road. They say that if the reservoir would fail again, the water would not reach the campground. Mama was still nervous though.

Here is a photo of the old campground. See the rocks. They look small from here, but they are boulders. These boulders were pushed down the hill by the force of the water and landed where the campground was. (Okay, we confess we took these photos on different days.)

See the space where there are no trees. There were trees there. They were swept away by the water, too.
These signs are all over the place.

Daddy says he seriously doubts if the sirens sounds that we would have enough time to make it up 200 steps before the water came. I probably could, but Mama couldn't. Mama is a klutz. She fell on her face this weekend. Yes, she did! We were walking along and the next thing I knew, Mama was eating dirt. It was embarrassing!

I'll share more photos tomorrow!

Jack
The Greyhound Who Is Happy To Be Home