Last Trip for a While!

 It is Friday!  I am back working and putting in 10 hours today.  Will only get 20 hours in this week, as we were off Monday and I took off Tues - Thurs for my hiking trip.  But I am glad I worked Sunday so i will at least get partial check!

It was nice having Monday off, but I spent much of my afternoon making a couple of dishes to take to the hiking trip for our pot luck the first night.  I made a bean dip and nachos fixings and made a cinnamon roll/caramel apple "lasagna" bake dish that I found on Pinterest.  It was yummy.  I also put out a few fall decorations like some pretty leaf garlands and a couple of metal pumpkins I put out on my front porch and a couple of wreaths - and that is about the extent of my fall effort!  Felt weird, because it was still mid 80's earlier this week!

Went to bed pretty early, so I could get early start to meet my friend to ride to the hiking trip.  I belong to a hiking club and they do overnight spring trip and a fall trip each year.  Last spring we did the spring trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas.  This was literally right before Covid shutdown.  

The hiking club fall trip was to Eminence, Missouri.  If you read my blog before today, you will recall that I went here a month ago to kayak on 3 of the area rivers and LOVED it.  

This is an area in Southern Missouri about 1.5 hours Southeast of Springfiend.  It is a beautiful area consisting of beautiful pristine forest protected in the Mark Twain National Forest and limestone and dolomite rock caves and springs resulting in rock formations, caves and spring fed rivers.  Very pretty area, sparsely populated, but popular for travelers wanting to hike and enjoy the rivers and look for the wild horses that live here.  

I will probably write and post pictures in multiple different entries on my blog because I took so many pictures and enjoyed it so much, I want to capture a record of it for myself as much as for the blog!  It was a great trip and I am so lucky to have happened across this hiking group that I joined a year and a half ago and have met so many wonderful people and made friends that I enjoy and admire so much.  

The officers of the club pick the hikes and scout the areas, researching and access maps and then doing the hikes before they invite the entire group.  We have suspended carpooling and mask up when we are doing our group photos to be respectful and careful due to the virus.  The officers work so hard to give us interesting and pretty hikes.  They even find lodging and reserve blocks of rooms for our overnight trips.  This trip to Eminence, we stayed at Echo Bluff State Park.  There is a lodge and cabins and RV camping.  It was very nice.  Beautiful setting and wonderful accomodations.

I will post more about our hikes and what pretty things we saw here.  I am just about ready to go for a short walk around the neighborhood with my DH.  The weather is just gorgeous now that I am back home.  I got home last evening around 7 and since there was a frost advisory, we rushed around for an hour trying to fit all our plants back in the house and garage.  We did not get all my cactus from the front porch in yet, but they seem OK today.  So maybe it didn't get below 32 last night.

My DH was glad to be home and I sure missed him too.  I told him how much I want my next trip there for him to be with me, we will just have to fork over some money for dog care, so we can have a little get-away together.  I sure was glad to be in my nice, new, comfy bed last night!  I was the last one in the cabin to pick my room (3 bedrooms) and I got the horrible mattress in the bunk bed room at Echo Bluff cabin.  The dogs sure were glad to see me too.