Ready to go to Big Cedar tomorrow.

Tonight’s picture is from our hike on Thursday when it was so warm. This was the beginning of the hike, so I was in pretty good shape. You can see that the trail went right along the lake. The other pictures had the woods in the background, but on this side of the trail was the lake. In all the seasons except winter, the lake wouldn’t be so easily seen, but there are many trails down to the lake if anyone wants to hike down to it. I really fell in love with this hike. There are lots of picnic areas and nice public bathrooms, even. Of course in other seasons there will be lots of people here and we only saw about 40 on the 4.4 mile hike; I think 4 were on bikes. There were about a dozen fishing and picnicking. Up by the restroom they have a playground and there were people there playing. There was a fire going in a fire pit and folks were huddled around it all wrapped up like it was winter. There were Don and I in our shorts. Of course it was winter, but it was also over 60 degrees. I guess if you were sitting still a fire would feel good, but we were plenty warm with our walking.

Today we did our last workout over at the fitness center. Tomorrow we move out to Big Cedar. They have a couple of awesome fitness centers out there, so we’ll have to find what we like best and start working a new plan. After our workout I laundered all our clothes and packed, so we’re starting clean tomorrow. We left out our church clothes and have everything else packed. Lots of it is already in the car. We’ll eat an oatmeal breakfast here and then check out on our way to church. We’ll eat lunch and grocery shop after church and then go out to Big Cedar to find our new home for the next 3 weeks.

Big Cedar is really nice, so we’re looking forward to it. Everything has been really nice since we’ve been here, but Big Cedar is special. The guy who started Bass Pro Shops built Big Cedar. It’s a real Ozark Wilderness experience, except it’s very deluxe. They have a cookie lady who comes by every night bringing cookies and coffee; just that kind of touch is nice. Everywhere you look is a stuffed wild animal or a fish on the wall or a set of antlers. I’ll get some pictures and post them to share while we’re there.

God is so good to give us this time, whether we’re at home or traveling. I thank Him for extra time on my life. I know I am so richly blessed. Thank you for caring to follow us in our experience, too. I pray that sharing our experience is helpful to someone.