A Weekend In The Wilderness

Hey it cooled off a bit today, I guess thanks to the torrential downpours yesterday.  Good thing, I was about to literally melt riding that scooter around.  Before I get around to my always-fascinating weekend coverage, I’ll throw out another bit of excitement from last week.  Martin and I traveled to beautiful Garden City, MO, last Tuesday to attend a KCBS barbecue judging class.  It was an interesting event;  We pretty much sat there and ate ‘que for about 3 hours.  They went over what to look for, what not to look for, proper judging etiquette, blah blah blah.  Interesting stuff, if maybe a bit lengthy for my stunted attention span.  My plan now is to hopefully go judge a few contests, to kind of survey the competition.  I’m going to give everybody top scores, to lull them into a false sense of security.  Sneaky.

Anyway, for our weekend entertainment, we traveled to Mahoney State Park for my sister Sharon’s surprise 40th birthday party.  (Made even more surprising by the fact that her birthday isn’t until December…)  We got there Friday afternoon and got our campground all situated, then settled in to wait for the party.  Actually, we stayed in a room in the Lodge, complete with A/C and wireless Internet access.  But, if I want to call it camping, so be it.  I was in a State Park, so I musta been roughing it.  The party was a big success;  Anything with a fried chicken dinner is a big success in my book.  We turned in a bit earlier than most though, because 1) There was a large constituent of little people there and they were giving me a nervous tic, and 2)  We always turn in early.

Saturday the vast majority of the revelers went to the nice water park which was on site.  We, however, lamely opted to take a side trip into Omaha and do some shopping.  Again, the little ‘un population was a bit dense at the water park.  Anyway, we just kind of shopped around anywhere that looked interesting, including a Big Dog Cycle shop, Cabela’s and Bass Pro.  Our lone purchase was some new BBQ gloves, although we did shop the GPS’ pretty hard.  After that outing, we enjoyed a very tasty buffet dinner back at the lodge, and then went and saw a play at the local Melodrama.  (They have a very wide variety of entertainment options at this place, especially for a State Park.)  It was a pretty amusing diversion;  If you’ve never been to a “Melodrama” (I certainly hadn’t,) you boo the villian, cheer the hero, and other such assorted silliness.  You also pelt the villain with popcorn, which the all the kiddies seemed to enjoy immensely, to put it mildly.  I think there were about 100 people under the age of 6 in our group, although there might have been closer to 20 and they were just moving really fast.  Hard to tell.

Sunday we got up early and hit the road.  Ronda was watching the dogs again so we had to get back and provide some relief there.  After a good mauling by the mutts, I headed directly down to the Brooksider to watch the Royals and soak up some peace and quiet.  Whew.  I didn’t make it all the way through the game;  If you watched any of it, it was very evident early on how it was going to end up.  Not to mention, my quest for peace and quiet was somewhat dimmed by the fact that they were sanding the floor in the next room.  Good grief.

2 thoughts on “A Weekend In The Wilderness

  1. So glad you could make it ALL THE WAY up to Nebraska for the weekend!! Thanks for coming. There WERE around 25-30 kids under the age of 12ish or so there…and several teenagers….so I can see your problem. Impressed you FINALLY made it to a Melodrama…are they fun or WHAT? Hey, be glad we didn’t have the party at the indoor play arena where you went LAST time we were all there together. To quote your now famous line we use whenever we’re stuck with tons of kids and mass mayhem “I’ve gone to Hell and paid a dollar to do it.” Thanks again and great seeing you!! Missed a great time (and mass mayhem) at the water park!!! I’ll have to send you some pics of it…especially the wave pool where the capacity is “only” 826!

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