Boiling Spring Campground near Dixon, Missouri

Next stop: Boiling Spring Campground on the Gasconade River just south of Dixon, Missouri. The campground was pretty and the campsites big. It's end of the camping season for Boiling Spring, so we were just one of five campers there over the weekend. We liked the solitude.

Right next to the camping area was a hay field that was baled while we were there. A few hundred feet away was the Gasconade River, a 280-mile-long stream that dumps into the Missouri River at a town of the same name.     

Our first full day Jim kayaked while I walked Maddie through hay fields. Then we explored the small towns of Dixon, St. Robert, and Waynesville. We drove by the Uranus Fudge Shop. We'd seen their billboards all along Route 44, advertising the fact that they sell fudge, rent and apparently sell guns, have a tattoo parlor, and more. You could get a pound of chocolate walnut, a semi-automatic weapon, and a tramp stamp in a single afternoon. I love fudge, but this place was above even my high bar for tacky, so we didn't stop. They did get me to mention it, however, so I guess they win.

The next day was supposed to have "some" rain.  "Some" turned out to be a lot. All day long. Jim watched TV, I read, and every time the rain slowed we walked the dogs.

Jim and Arlo hooking up the electricity and water at Boiling Spring Campground. The Gasconade River was on the other side of the trees behind the rig.

This hay field was actually part of the Boiling Spring facility.  The owners, who bought the place in the 1980s, were great and have relatives in Salt Lake City. Owner Larry told us a story about the huge snow storm he experienced while visiting SLC.  He was there for a meeting and the snow was so bad the organizers moved their presentation to the hotel, because attendees couldn't leave. And that's why we've spent the last few winters in Yuma and Tucson. But it's a dry snow.

Boiling Spring rents canoes and kayaks.  Then they take people up stream in old school buses and let them float back.  Jim, however, just took off on his own.

Jim paddling off from the campground on the Gasconade River.  He used Bev's kayak since Bev didn't feel like kayaking and Jim's boat has a funky patch covering a hatch we lost somewhere in St. Louis.

Jim's view from the kayak. 

A river view from the campground.  There actually is a "boiling spring" along the bank; you can see it bubbling on the other side of the river from the campground. Per the campground's web site, it's the 14th largest natural spring in Missouri, and pumps 42 million gallons of water into the Gasconade every year.

Arlo posing near our campsite with the Gasconade River behind him.  The Gasconade runs through Mark Twain National Forest.