Saturday, September 20, 2008

Bugs, marvelous BUGS!

Sept. 17 –



If you want to see SUPER COOL bugs, do check out the Verdon Lake campground! WOW! What a great morning we had. Decided not to rush along, so had pancakes and bacon, boiled some eggs for lunch while the stove was on. Meanwhile, the girls began finding increasingly cool insects. It started with the black-and-yellow spiders with their big webs. Then V spotted a large (2”) grasshopper caught (and wrapped) in one of the webs. When I moved in to take pictures of the web and doomed grasshopper in the branches of a 3’-tall bush, we continued to discover more bugs: the praying mantis, mating grasshoppers, caterpillar, cicada and finally a locust.

Interesting sounds last night: raccoon? Beaver? Ducks? Catfish? The lake was active. At 4:30 a.m., I heard something that may have been owls. We finally tore ourselves away from camp and headed for St. Joseph, Missouri.

Something terrible has happened to this once vibrant town. The beautiful, historic buildings of downtown are largely vacant, and while some sort of revitalization effort is taking place one one block, I wonder if it will be enough. The residential neighborhoods near downtown weren’t much better off. Still…we enjoyed our visited Pony Express Museum (best kids area we’ve seen in any museum along this trek) & Monument, Patee House (too late in day), Jesse James House. Oh, and while downtown someone approached us and asked about our trailer. He asked if he could buy it, but wasn’t really interested in paying the price.

Headed to Lewis & Clark State Park to camp. It’s pretty hot and we’re tired.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog featured with: