We headed down to the Missouri River near Platte at Platte Creek State Park. That choice was probably mistake number one, but how are we to know? There were several sites under significant amounts of water. Some of the sites had no flat ground, except for the area where you'd park a camper and vehicle. So, we arrived to site Number 2. Here is the view from the bottom of the hill it was perched on.
And from the top of the hill.
As you can see, there is no flat ground. So, we drove around immediately after arrival and looked for a new site, and we found one, but it had one drawback we didn't notice until later, but at least we had a site with flat ground. So, we go settled in. We set up the tent, and started work on supper. I started playing with the wood we had, and realized I'd only forgotten one thing (which is actually true that it was the only thing I forgot): fire starters. This could have been a starter log, or lighter fluid, or any number of things, but I had nothing. The fire did not start well at all, and after 10 minutes of roasting hot dogs on a barely warm barely existent fire, we gave up. About 20 minutes later, roaring fire as the logs finally caught on. That didn't make me too happy, but what can you do. We stayed up and endured the scorching heat. That's when we found the drawback, no trees means no shade. The flat land had taken precedence, and we had no shade for relief. We survived, and finally decided it was time to inflate the new air mattress and head to sleep. This is when we found a very major flaw. I'd failed to set up the tent prior to leaving, and we found that a two person tent does not mean 2 adult persons. My feet were sticking out the door, and the door would not zip because we were bursting at the seams. So, because of this, we were getting eaten alive in the tent, plus, the lack of windows in the tent made it nearly unbearable. We lasted about 10 minutes before heading back to Mitchell, but we left items behind and planned to return. We headed home about 11pm, arriving at 12:30, but camping in style....in our own bed.
The next morning, after a stop at Cabelas, we were headed back with our brand new tent determined to make this work. We got to the site, and eventually got the tent set up, despite the complete lack of any directions for setup. I couldn't believe it. If you buy a Trekker tent, hope you have a college degree because setting it up will require one (well, maybe that's slightly exaggerated, but I'm pretty sure that's all that saved me). So, we got the tent up and made breakfast/lunch on the new camp stove. That actually went fairly well, and pretty soon, we were set for a nap in the new tent. With windows, but no breeze, it was hot, but I'm sure I lost weight over this weekend. We got through the nap and time to get the jetski out and and ride around for a while. We took her out on the Missouri and cruised up and down for about an hour, then decided to head to Platte to find some Ice cream, and to get into an air conditioned environment with temps over 90 and no wind and no shade. We found a great place in downtown Platte, although I can't remember the name. Brick something or other, but it was homemade flavors of different ice creams. Ohh was it ever good. After some time, we went back to the campground, and prepared for supper. I decided to start the fire early in light of what had happened the night before, and wouldn't you know it, in 5 minutes, had a great fire going, 45 minutes too early. Eventually we got the bush pies made and consumed, and were enjoying the evening as the breeze came up and the sun went under some clouds. Eventually, the mosquitos became too much and retired to our new tent. This slept well when we had enough room inside, and other than the window flaps whipping around making noise, it was a pleasant night sleep. Unfortunately, we had to get up early and head for Sioux Falls for me to get some refereeing in, but what a weekend it was. There were many failures, too many to mention here really, but we learned a lot about camping, and next time (yes, we decided despite the issues there will be more times) we will be that much wiser. For pictures from the severely flooded campground, take a look at the photo gallery.
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