LBL One
We’re back!!
What? You didn’t even know I was gone? Yeah, my bad. My blog has been on auto-pilot for the last six or so days. We’ve been on vacation!
I didn’t want to spent an incredible amount of time talking about the trip, but I have so many photos I would like to post. So here you have day one.
We left Sunday (Mother’s Day) around 8.30 in the morning, aka the latest hour of the day I’ve ever left for a vacation on. But since the trip is only something like four and a half hours, we didn’t feel obligated to get up too early.
First stop was to meet up with my brother and sister-in-law and niece then we started towards Illinois where we would spend literally two minutes before we’d head into Kentucky.
We had used the new Beta of Yahoo Maps to tell us how to get from Sikeston, MO to Wickliff, KY to our lodge outside of Benton, KY. This was because telling it to take us straight from Sikeston to the lodge took us very much out of our way as it attempted to follow more interstate than smaller highways and very far North into Illinois. So while we had the shorter and more scenic route to travel, we ran into a bit of trouble in Wickliff. The highway we wanted was not appropriately marked and Yahoo told us to do funny things, but we made it. Of course, this started the whole usual make-fun-of-Val stuff from my brother who said, “stop looking on the internet and get a real map,” as well as other comments rating from sarcastic to mean. Steve and I, however, fought for a while. This tends to happen. Part of the problem was not just the directions but that he doesn’t quite listen when I say, “turn here,” and so we have to go turn around.
Of course, we made it soon enough. Our first real stop was at the Kentucky Lake Dam. It was pretty amazing - the lake, the sky, it was all so big and beautiful. We tried to take some group photos using my tripod, but, of course, my kid was as grumpy as all get out because he wasn’t allowed to:
a) run out into traffic
b) climb down the rock hill of the dam
c) get into the lake
Oh well. More to tease him with when he has his first date.
From there we just looked around a bit at the top of the Land Between the Lakes (hereto referred to as LBL) and ended up at a visitor’s center where we were finally able to go to the bathroom and let E (they had a little playground there) and the dog run around. Did I mention we brought Rimshot? We’ve never taken him on vacation before, it was quite fun. It was nice not having to worry about him at home alone for once.
After a little while we wrangled the screaming kid back in the car and headed to the lodge. I think we got there about 2.00 or 2.30 and even though we weren’t supposed to be able to check in until 4, the cottage was ready.
A while ago, when planning this trip, we found websites of lodges/resorts in the area and started checking out prices. We selected five we liked that were in our price range and we ended up booking at our first choice: Bee Spring Lodge. Some of you are going to look at that website and wonder why in the heck it was our first choice. I really can’t say, besides the whole family owned thing appealed to me, and they offered other things we wanted such as allowing us to bring Rimshot. I just had a good feeling about the place, I guess, and we ended up really enjoying it there. I admit that the outside of the place didn’t look like much, but the inside was really nice, looked newly remodeled. The cottages were built in the 50’s, I believe it was, so they’re older. Besides, what’s important is that we had a nice clean place to shower, have meals, and sleep, etc.
Steve started up the BBQ not long after we got there and, let me tell you, that was really nice. I hardly had to do any cooking down there. He BBQ’d twice, made breakfast once, we picnicked once for lunch, snacked for another lunch, and ate one supper out. It was quite nice (we all know how I don’t necessarily like to cook).
I took Elijah for a little walk while the rest of them were doing their thing then after supper we all went for a walk and explored most of the lodge’s area.
When it got too dark for that, we retired in front of the tv for a little while before going to bed. I was the last one settled in and when I did, I had to laugh, the clock read 9.30pm.
Tomorrow: Day Two, Monday.
