Day 12-June 17, 2013-Lawrence, KS and Clinton State Park
Poured last night, lightning and thunder, too. Cloudy ‘til about 2, then sunny and warm. Gets windy and cool at night.
We took a ride around the campground, which is mostly empty, only a few campers, and the state park, which is almost 2000 acres of mostly open meadows. Found out the butterflies are Hackberry Emporers and there are hundreds of thousands of them. They suddenly appeared about a week ago and I read that they defoliate the trees so they’re not really wanted here. They are everywhere, sometimes in groups of 50 or more on the roads. They land on you, fly in to car whenever you open a door and are generally a pain in the butt. But it could be worse, they could be mosquitos. Quite a few red squirrels, lots of birds and bluebird houses in all the meadows. We saw a deer on the road close to town (this one was alive). There’s a marina on Lake Clinton on the campground property run by the Corps. Of Engineers but only one or two boaters were out-it’s Monday morning. Lake is pretty, very calm, a flock of Canada geese paddling on by. Went into town to check it out, pretty fair size like most college towns.
Got back to the RV, had lunch and relaxed and read a bit, but the steps behind the campsite leading into to the woods were calling me to go down and see what was down there. So we went down 65 steps and then trekked about for about 25 minutes into the woods through a narrow muddy trail, over roots and rocks, the path zig zagging so it wasn’t such a steep descent. Then we had to climb down and over an outcropping of rocks to get down to Clinton Lake, a beautifully clean lake with only one canoe on it. So peaceful!
Back to the campsite for dinner, then a nice bike ride, put the bikes back on the RV and hooked it up to the truck so we can get an easy start tomorrow morning. Had another nice fire although it doesn’t get dark here ‘til after 9:30.
Called the campground we were planning on going to tomorrow but they’re closed. Seems they’ve had a lot of rain there, a lot more is expected and the campground is having a mud problem. Glad I called, we had a backup campground in mind and they said they have no problem. It was very wet here in town with big puddles in most of the parking lots.