Living Our Dream: Little Rock, AR to Kansas City, MO

June 19, 2011

Little Rock, AR to Kansas City, MO

Lee's Summit, MO

Our friends, Alan and Marilyn who are full-timers originally from Little Rock, are workamping for the summer at Branson Lakeside RV Park. We needed a place to make an overnight stop on our way to Kansas City, so we decided to swing a little to the east to make that stopover in Branson so we could say hello. Alan and Marilyn were on duty when we pulled in. Marilyn got us checked in, and Alan escorted us to our site.

This Good Sam campground has full hookups with 30/50-amp electric, free cable and free Wi-fi. The roads are paved, and the pads are gravel. There are both back-in and pull-through sites.

Lakeside RV Park is operated by the City of Branson and is situated on the banks of Lake Taneycomo. The sites are a little narrow, but we had a nice front-row site with a great view of the lake. Paul took the photo below with a couple of fishermen on the dock and mist on the lake early in the morning from the front windshield of the motor home.

Lake Taneycomo lies between Tablerock Lake and Bullshoals Lake. It is a dammed up section of the White River between the two larger lakes, but it's more of a widened section of river than a lake.

Several weeks ago, Lake Taneycomo flooded when the Corps of Engineers adjusted some of the floodgates at the dam, apparently to prevent worse flooding elsewhere due to heavy rains. Although the campground is back in operation, there is a bit of fine, sandy silt along the edges of the roads and sites.

The next photo is a view down the road behind us showing more of the pull-through sites. The campground was pretty quiet in spite of construction on the bridge in the background and in spite of the railroad tracks that run past the back of the campground. Fortunately, there aren't many trains, and the nearest crossing where the trains have to sound their horns is pretty far away. It was also hot and humid, so we ran the air conditioner all day and all night which helped drown out any outside noise.

The sites in the back rows of the campground have plenty of nice shade.

Of course, we needed sun for our satellite dish, but we also liked having a view of the lake. There are a lot of Canada geese that make their home at the lake. The photo below shows a few of them hanging out on the shore near the marina.

Alan and Marilyn got off work at 5:00 PM, which gave us a little time to visit before heading out the Casa Fuentes for dinner. We ate there with Lora and J. Michael in the spring of 2010 when we attended Lora's roommate's wedding. We liked Casa Fuentes so we suggested it to Alan and Marilyn.

The food was as good as it was on our first visit. Prices for combination dinners are about $7 to $9.

After we returned from dinner, we hung out for a while with Alan, Marilyn and some of the other workampers, then we made our way back to the motor home. The following morning, we headed out to our next stop just outside Kansas City, MO.

We had reserved a site at Blue Springs Campground in Lee's Summit where we stayed when we were in this area last summer. Jackson County operates Blue Springs and two other campgrounds. Blue Springs has 87 sites - some with electric only (30 amp), some with water and electric (30 amp), and some with full hookups (30/50 amp). Most of the sites are back-ins, but there are a few pull-throughs. The roads are a little narrow, but they are paved, and the sites are all gravel. Sites tend to be grouped in twos and threes, and there are wide grassy areas between the groups of sites. The photo below shows our site at Blue Springs.

There is some traffic noise from the I-470 bypass that runs about a mile from the campground, but the noise lessens somewhat at night. Otherwise, the campground was pretty quiet.

The campground was fairly empty when we got there, but it filled to about 2/3 capacity on the weekend later in our stay.

Unfortunately, we had a bad thunderstorm with high winds during the weekend at about 1:30 Saturday morning. Our weather radio went off earlier in the evening with a thunderstorm watch, and it woke us about 1:15 AM with a severe thunderstorm warning. Since the warning mentioned high winds, we pulled in the main slide and stowed the satellite dish.

It was too noisy to sleep with the wind and the thunder, so Paul sat up and watched the lightening and the small tree outside the motor home window bowing in the wind. He kept checking the wind speed on our weather station, and it showed a sustained wind of 20 to 30 mph for over 45 minutes. There were many gusts over 40 mph, and the strongest gust we recorded was 53 mph.

Paul saw 6 vehicles leave the campground during the storm, and he saw the ranger drive through twice, once accompanied by the local police. In the morning, we realized how bad the storm really was as evidenced by our neighbor's tents that had collapsed...

...and our other neighbor's tent trailer that had overturned. No wonder so many people left. To our knowledge, no one was hurt, but the canopy in the center of the photo above and tent trailer below were toast.

We're grateful there wasn't more damage, and that we made it through the storm with no problems.

The tenters returned Saturday morning and stayed the rest of the weekend. On Sunday afternoon, we watched them stuff their mangled canopy into the dumpster before they left.

The people who had the tent trailer also returned on Saturday. A bunch of guys turned the trailer back over onto its wheels, then began trying to figure out what to do with all the bent up supports and trying to stuff all the canvas back inside. We left to do some sightseeing, and the tent trailer was gone when we came back so they must have been successful getting the thing into shape so the could tow it home.

Kansas City is the home of delicious barbecue, so we'll be adding a couple of stops to our Zeller 2011 Foodie Tour, and we also have some interesting sightseeing to report on. Stay tuned.

Posted on June 19, 2011 | Permalink