Hillsdale Lake Camping..

I just googled this park and it is 24 miles down here from my home in Overland Park...  And of course the main road has to be closed for bridge work...

That is much shorter than most of our motorcycle rides....  But this is perhaps the closest Kansas State Park to our home...

In Kansas they have a state park fee, which is a daily usage fee just to drive on the property...  You can buy a state park permit with your license plate for an annual...  But I never know which of my vehicles to purchase it with...

I might go state park camping once a year, and it seems that we never use the same car...  But with Loyce gone now, I will perhaps go more with the kids in the future..  She wasn't as keen about the state parks because they didn't have full hookups and the toilets are mostly vault style..

When I paid the fee last night, I had to pay the day use fee for the motorhome for over 65 at $2.75 a day which is normally $4.50.  And that didn't seem prohibitive, until you realize that they tack on another $3 for the concessionaire...

And then the camping was a separate purchase for water and 30 amp electric..  That was $16.50 a night, and if there was a concessionaire fee, it must have been embedded..   The camp host had a small wooden shack that he had all of this electronic equipment in to go online and record these transactions..  But he could take credit cards.........!

So we are camped for two nights of the weekend on a grassy sight along this lake.. That you might be able to see if you walk to the far end of the grounds..

The lake itself is a army corps of engineer project, but Kansas has and runs the camping..  Some of the COE projects here in this state have both state and federal campgrounds.  But there is only a state park here..

Of course that is good right now as we are in the federal shut down.  I would assume that those parks are shuttered now.

But the good part of being here is the fact that they let you wash on your camper without further fees.  So my son Ben and I were attacking the front of this motorhome with a brush and a big bucket of soapy water...

The sun was drying out the suds before we could even rinse it off, so we only did the bugs on the front, but they had been on there since we were in Michigan in July...

I rationalized that driving to Arizona would put me in rain somewhere before got to the destination...  Maybe I can get the coach professionally washed down there once I arrive...

It is rather cool here, just barely making 70 degrees with a wind out of the North.  Couldn't ever get away from the sweatshirt once you were out of the sun... But that's camping in the fall..

Retired Rod