We brought Patty home on 2 August.  Everyone was quite excited.

The previous owner left us with just about everything we needed to go camping immediately.  The whole family was chomping at the bit to go out.  We had a rare weekend with nothing going on, so we decided to load up Patty and do a quick overnight shake down trip to figure out what else we wanted and make sure that everything in the trailer worked.  We had previously scouted out Indian Cave State Park in Nebraska as place to explore close to home.

 

04 August 2018

Travel and Set Up

The drive up to Indian Cave was pretty quick.  We followed the Missouri River up through Kansas and Nebraska.  The trip was fairly easy on two lane paved roads the whole way.

We arrived to the front entrance and were greeted by a friendly pay station attendant.  The check-in process was painless despite not having a reservation.  We chose an unreserved site and got set up.  We grabbed a quick lunch of sammies and chips so we could get out and see the park.

Exploring the Park

Indian Cave does not have an expansive list of activities but far more than we could fit in an afternoon.  With our limited time we chose to explore the namesake cave and hike the Rock Bluff Run.  The cave is interesting, but nothing that blows socks off after visiting places like Carlsbad Caverns for the geology or Mesa Verde for the cultural history.  However, it’s still a gem along the Missouri River in rural Nebraska.

The Rock Bluff Run is a trail that climbs up a ridge overlooking the Missouri River and connects to several other trails.  We decided to take trail 8A (not a wildly imaginative name) to return to the trail head.  The hike had some elevation climb and in early August, the humidity and temperature of Southern Nebraska was not friendly.  On the ridge we caught some nice glimpses of the river and views of Missouri looking east.  Once we descended off the ridge and down to trail 8A, the humidity and bugs became uncomfortable.  We didn’t hang around to enjoy nature because the bugs chased us back to the truck.

Driving Around

After our hikes, we drove around the rest of the park.  There is a restored settlement from a group of “half breeds” that were children of pioneer/explorers and Native Americans.  This group of people were abandoned by both cultures and fought for existence.  The area of the present day state park is one of the settlements where they lived.  We stopped by the visitor center, which was a bit dated and small.  We learned much more on our own out in the park.

 

Back at Camp

After our exploring we headed back to Patty.  While the adults prepared dinner, the kids tore off into the usual storm of kids at a campground.  They rode bikes, romped around on the playground, and played games with their campground buddies.  We had a good dinner and, of course, made s’mores for dessert.  Once darkness set in, the kids got cleaned up and watched a movie before bed.

05 August 2018

We packed up Patty and made the drive home.  We learned the usual first trip lessons:

-We need to figure out roles for everyone at set up and tear down

-We needed to get some closet organizers to make the trailer closets more efficient

-We brought too much stuff

-We were scared we were going to use all of our freshwater, but really we had more than enough fresh water and plenty of room in our holding tanks.

-Patty was in good shape.  The A/C, water pump, stove, oven, etc all worked…except for the gas sensor.  It went off a few times.  We’ve since remedied the fun 3 am wake up calls for low voltage alarms.

 

We enjoyed our first trip.  It was an easy trip to figure out what we didn’t know.

See you out there,

P-T ParaD