Table Rock Lake from Eagle Rock Campground

After a good night's sleep in the Walmart parking lot in Neosho, Missouri, we are on the road to our first campground. We are headed down the narrow winding highways of the Ozark mountains this morning.

We are calling this the roller coaster highway, as it dips up and down through the Ozark Mountains. In this unusually straight section, you can see the ribbon of highway climbing up before it plummets down and immediately back up again. It was quite a ride in a 35-foot motor home.

That road also went beside the edges of Table Rock Lake, and that is our destination today. The only way to get to our campground is over those winding roads, and that might be the reason we found an empty camping spot.

While some of the areas near the lake are flooded, Eagle Rock campground is built on a hill so it is safe and dry. We can't say the same for the day-use area, where most of the tables and grills are under water.

Likewise, the roads and parking lots closer to the lake are also under water.

After getting the motor home set up in this nice Corp of Engineer campground, we put the kayak on the lake.

We're used to steering around branches and rocks, but today we were making our way around grills and picnic tables that were totally submerged. This table top was still sticking out of the water, and it reminded us of swim-up bars in those fancy resorts. This is our less-fancy version of a boat-up picnic table.

Table Rock Lake is a snake-like body of water that meanders through the valleys of the Ozark Mountains in southern Missouri. We are in the southwest corner of this map of the lake.

This evening's kayak trip took us to the very end of one of the hundreds of inlets and coves on this lake.

Mark spotted this snake in the water beside us. He read that venomous water snakes float on top of the water, while non-venomous snakes swim with only their heads out. The picture is a little fuzzy, but we think that we are glad that he was heading the other way. Mark spotted two different snakes today, but Denisa purposefully has a hard time seeing them.

Instead of looking at snakes, Denisa would rather be concentrating on the giant purple blooms that are draped in the trees that hang over the lake.

We are guessing that these are relatives to the wisteria plants we have seen in well-manicured gardens. But today they are planted along this wild lake.

We were out on the water until the sun began to set. The water on this huge lake was calm and peaceful tonight. We feel like we have wandered into another of God's wonders this evening at Eagle Rock Campground.