First Camping Trip of the 2022 Season We Went Back to Our Favorite Eisenhower State Park at Lake Melvern

Two Tents Ready to Camp

We are so excited to be out camping for the first time this year. Somewhat a last minute scheduling as we figured all the spots would already have been taken when we booked our site only a few weeks before the Memorial Day weekend. We booked three spots as Greg and Erin now have a tent and went with us. We had some other friends we were trying to convince to go with us, but it did not work out for them, so we kept the third camp site anyway. This will be our longest camping experience so far in our rather young camp life as we will camp for four nights. Prior to this weekend, we had only camped three nights in a row last year, so we are excited to be out for another day.

 

 Packed a Lot!

The events of our weekend are written each day, or the day after, to track accounts of what we did those specific days. This post will not be published until the weekend after our weekend get away to give you a sense of timeline and how I was writing the memories of each day.

 

Thursday, May 26, 2022

I worked a half day this day so we could get out to the camp site earlier and start the weekend. We ended up leaving later than we had planned and I had a conference call to join while we were driving out to the site. We did manage to get out to the camp site by 4 pm. We took Oliver, so he rode in Carrie’s lap as there was not room to put his car seat anywhere in the car. Oliver was so excited to go in the car although he had no idea where we were headed.

Once again, our car was completely full and could not fit another item into the car. Carrie was sitting with a box at her legs full of wood and we had other boxes stuck in various places for firewood… we do not want to run out… Our car was stacked to the ceiling with everything we needed for our camping weekend. Of course, after we arrived at the camp site, we realized/remembered everything we forgot. Oh well, nothing we need immediately and we can live without those items, but it sure would have been nice to have them for this long weekend.

 

Once we got camp set up, we chilled for a while and enjoyed some adult beverages. It was a bit chilly with a good wind gust, but later in the evening the wind completely stopped and it was a beautiful night with stars as far as we could see down to the horizon. It was beautiful!

 

Firedisc Dinner is Served

We did fajitas the first night. Man they were so good! We did them in the Firedisc that we bought last year for camping. Good way to start our camping weekend with good food. We made short work of dinner and headed to the fire pit. As I mentioned, the wind died down once the sun went down, so the fire was nice to have going to warm things up a little as it was in the 50s or 60s, but sure nice to not have the wind blowing any longer.

 

Sitting Around Camp Fire

Erin got our fire roaring and we had a fun night listening to a playlist Carrie had us working on for original music scores. It was fun to hear what everyone selected and then try and think what movie the music was from. We stayed up late the first night listening to music, telling stories, and looking at the beautiful sky with all of the stars. 

 

Carrie did mention she wants to get up early one morning during this camping weekend to watch the sunrise. About 1 am, I asked her if Friday morning was that time and she said maybe Saturday morning. I think this might be difficult to accomplish as we enjoy staying up late, around the camp fire, and telling stories, so we will see if this happens.

 

Lake Was Calm Like Glass

Friday, May 27, 2022

Our first full day at the camp site was a good day. We slept a late and then had egg and bacon sandwiches to start the day. We spent time just relaxing, reading, listening to music, and talking. Such a relaxing day doing nothing. By mid-afternoon we were playing cornhole. We played teams that we changed around throughout the game. It was a lot of fun, but a few of us got a little burnt. I once again have my outlines of shoes on my feet without shoes. One item Carrie and I forgot was sunscreen, but we did end up picking it up on Saturday to we could keep safe.

 

We stayed up late listening to playlists we all submitted to Carrie ranging from songs we like to sing to songs we like to dance to while we listen. Oliver was enjoying himself sniffing all the smells and seeing people go by from their camp sites. We did let Oliver go leash-free while around the camp site which is something new for us and for him. He did great off of the leash. A few times he would start to wonder off and we would call his name, so he would come right back to camp. Good boy!

 

Sunrise Coming up Over Lake

Saturday, May 28, 2022

Saturday morning we all got up early to watch the sunrise. It was an idea Carrie had that she wanted to see the sunrise from where we are camping. We all got up with no problem and took some pictures of the sun coming up over the lake. It was beautiful! We could have gotten up a little earlier as we missed some of the colors, but it was still breathtaking to see the sun climb in the sky.

 

Walking Trails

Following watching the sunrise, we all went back to bed for a bit before we started the day. We had an easy breakfast with snacks and then headed out for the day. We then headed out to get some sunscreen, firewood, and to do some trails. Nice way to start the day. When we got back to camp, we relaxed and listened to the Royals playing in the afternoon. 

 

A Few of Us Sleeping

Some of us might have taken naps following the Royals winning their game and of course Carrie snapped a picture of us all snoozing with some snoring happening too. Always fun to get a picture of sleepy heads after having a fun time camping.

 

For dinner Carrie and Erin went into Casey’s to pick up pizza. Tradition as this is the second time we have done this as our first time was last year when we stayed at this same camp site with Greg and Erin. Delicious and no one had to cook. Following dinner as the sun started to set, we played another round of cornhole mixing up the teams once again. Beautiful evening as we played our game and listened to music. Finally, we could not see any longer, so got ready for the evening which included taking showers before we settled around the camp fire to spend the evening.

 

Sunday, May 29, 2022

We awoke early this morning to our tent leaning in our heads as the wind picked up. Oliver was a little frightened and it was rather concerning to Carrie and I too. The south side of our tent was being blown in so much by the wind it was hitting my head and freaking Oliver out. Oliver was shivering so bad as he was scared, so Carrie put a blanket over him and held him which helped to calm him down. The sun was not up yet, but I am not sure what time the wind started although it did finally dwindle and we were able to sleep until about 8:30 or 9. 

 

Tent, Lake, Movie, and Fire

Greg and Erin left us on Sunday leaving just Carrie and I to be around camp. There were still a lot of campers down the way, but no one in our area. We spent the afternoon snoozing and I listened to the Royals game. By dinner time, we had leftovers we had made the other nights camping. Decided we would build a fire and settle in for watching a movie. We watched a movie from Netflix which was not very good, but entertained us enough that we did not stop watching. The movie we watched was “Senior Year”. Glad it was “free”.

 

We let the fire die out and decided to head to bed. We wanted to get an early start to Monday morning to get packed up and head back to Topeka. We both knew we would be tired once we got back home and likely needed to rest up Monday afternoon so we could prepare to be back to work on Tuesday.

 

View from Inside Tent to Lake

Monday, May 30, 2022

I woke up a few times overnight with some high winds once again. Not as bad as the other night, but it did wake me up a few times. I know Oliver woke up from the gusts too as I would wake up and look over and he would be looking at me. I am not sure Carrie heard a thing. As we began to break down our camp site, I thought the winds picked up again, so once we took the rain fly off of the tent, our tent almost completely collapsed in on itself. Disconnecting the lines and trying to fold up the tent was a challenge, but we managed to get it done and not lose the rain fly, tent, or our tarp.

 

Tent camping in high winds is not a lot of fun, but we survived. I am thankful we did have some good weather for one or two days. While the winds were high overnight, and some during the day, overall, it was a great camping trip.

 

Sleepy Oliver

We were packed up and ready to leave about 10:30 or so. We were back in Topeka and had the car unpacked by 11:30. Oliver was exhausted as he sat in his pillow seat on Carrie’s last on the way home. He could not keep his eyes open and his tongue was out. So tired after protecting our camp site for four nights. I think he had a great time!

 

We had checked for ticks a few times and not found any on ourselves, or Oliver, but Monday evening, Carrie found one crawling off of Oliver. Later that night, we found one on me and one on Carrie that had locked into our skin. We got them removed and have not found any more on Oliver or us. Thankful the ticks were not too bad when we went. I read a Reddit camping post from someone saying they went camping in another state in the woods and found 115 tickets in 24 hours. I think we would check out and leave at that point. No thanks!

 

Closing

We had so much fun camping. So happy we were able to take Oliver camping with us and he did great! Had so much fun with Greg and Erin. We ate some amazing meals thanks to everyone involved (team effort). I hope we are able to go again soon. It is fun to put together amazing moments in nature. This was our third time for Carrie and I to camp at this exact spot and I imagine we will go back again sometime in the future to camp again. We hope to try out some new sites and other camp grounds in the future. For now, I use these blog postings and pictures to recall our time at these favorites spots as we continue to enjoy our camping adventures.

 

Until next time, enjoy your camping adventures and please feel free to comment and share your experiences. Note, clicking on any of the pictures on this post will link out to our Flickr page for all of our pictures.

Our Second Trip to Eisenhower State Park Was So Fun… We Want to Do It Again and Soon!

We want to go camping again! We went on our recent camping trip to Melvern Lake in Lebo, KS. We were planning to take our little dog, Oliver, but as the days approached, he was not doing great, so we decided to leave him behind. In hindsight, it was best that we did as the first night was chilly and then our last night camping it poured down rain with a lot of lightening and thunder; Oliver would have freaked out and not had anywhere to go within the tent, so it is best he did not go.

We went out mid-afternoon on Thursday, October 21. Greg and Erin were meeting us after Erin finished with work, so Carrie and I got the tent set up, ready to make dinner, etc. and we were ready for the weekend. While we took some firewood as did Greg and Erin, we went through all of it the first night. 

Although it was chilly the first night, it was a perfect night. We used the Firedisc to cook supper where we made fried rice along with Bulgogi. It was our first attempt at doing fried rice let alone Bulgogi, but it was really good! We ate late and by headlamp and cell phones as the moon was not out yet when we were eating. 

The moon did come out after we finished eating and we were sitting around the fire pit. The moon had a ring around it that stuck around for a few hours while we sat and admired the moon. We tried to take pictures of the moon, but it did not give it justice to what we were seeing. It was a cold evening, so the fire felt really good. Great first night at our camp site!

The second day (Friday), we all slept late and so we ended up not evening doing breakfast. Joan and Eddie came out to join us for lunch and be around the fire pit. We did chili in the Firedisc which was our first time doing that with the Firedisc. Carrie had read some sites and blogs and it came out great! It was a fun afternoon/evening sitting around talking, eating, and chatting.

The third day (Saturday), we did cook breakfast and once again on the Firedisc. Potatoes, sausage, cheese, eggs, and wrapped up in a tortilla. Carrie said she would change some things on it, but I thought it was pretty dang good to start the day. We spent the day once again relaxing and playing some games. I could not have asked for a more comfortable day just chilling and not doing anything. 

Saturday night around 2 am, the storm that had been forecast hit our area. We had heavy rain, lightening, thunder, and strong winds. The storms woke me up as the tent was going back and forth. I could hear the rain pounding on the south side of the tent and a little water came in under the flap for the vent. We only had one hook come up down and it was on the south side near the vent, so a small table we had in the tent dumped contents. Overall, no major issues and then did great through the heavy storm. Another reason glad our dog, Oliver, was not with us as there would have been no where he could have gone to “get away” from the sounds.

Sunday morning was low key as we knew we had to head out. Had a light breakfast before we started picking up and getting ready to head out. 

We love this spot as it was our second visit to this same camp site (see Melvern Lake). We plan to go back and maybe check out some other areas of the State Park for camping… but why change from a place we love?

Below is Instagram post Carrie did from our camping weekend.

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A post shared by Carrie H. (@carrieloulou)

 

Have you camped at Eisenhower State Park? Where is your favorite location to campus at this State Park or any Kansas State Park? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

Camping at Eisenhower State Park at Lake Melvern was a Success with Cold and Rain

Carrie, Oliver, and I went on our first camping adventure May 10 - 12, 2021. Our location was Eisenhower State Park located on Lake Melvern. Carrie had researched a number of camp sites and spots at various sites. We settled on 5 Star Camp Ground located in the Eisenhower State Park. We selected lot 514 and after arriving, we changed to 516. Going in the middle of the week, there was no one else in our camp area that was camping, so we were able to change without any issue. We were pleased with site 516. Great view of the lake, paths to hike, and most important, a good spot to pitch our tent. 

We both took off work for our camping adventure. I ended up taking the whole week off even though we were camping three days. We attended Erins’ graduation Friday following our camping trip, so it worked out to take the whole week. Plus, as it turns out, after camping three days, I could use the rest on Thursday. It also helped that I needed to mow, so that happened Thursday.

Carrie did a lot of research on camping. She has been watching video blogs (vlogs) and we have watched a few of them together. She got a lot of great ideas from the vblogs. Ideas from lights, washing dishes, to how to cook. We had also ordered a number of items to take on our trip which was from her research and included mats that self inflate and have foam, better sleeping bags, a rug for the tent, and then spots for our shoes inside and out of the tent. This means we had a lot of items to pack for the car. Not to mention items for Oliver that we were taking too. A three day, two night, camping experience meant we had the back completely packed with items with the seat next to Oliver also packed to the ceiling. I believe Carrie was holding items in her lap as there was no place else to put it in the car. Luckily, the drive to the camp site was only about 45 minutes.

Site 516 was close to the water with a little trail down to the water. We later found out it was a hot fishing spot to catch Crappie as we saw people in there fishing throughout the three days we were there and they were catching a lot of fish. One guy on our last day caught his limit, left, and came back to fish more. We watched them catch fish and decided at some point our future camping experience, we will fish and enjoy that experience too.

Really, site 516 was perfect with the location, the fire pit, and then we ended up putting our tent to the west of the large tree in the picture to the left. It was a nice flat spot for the tent. We used a tarp to set our tent on so that moisture from the ground would not come up through the tent. As it turned out, good we did as it rained on us pretty hard on the second morning we were there… More on this later on in the story.

It did not take long at all to set up our tent and get situated with our camp site. Staked out Oliver while we set up our tent, got the picnic table situated, and made preparations for a light lunch which included chicken salad sandwiches. It was a good way to start our camping experience. Check-in for our site was anytime after 2 pm, so we had a late lunch and a chance to enjoy the scenery. As we were beginning to set up our tent, we noticed a tick on the tent. It would be one of two we would see the whole time we were camping, but still have to be careful. We will be inspecting Oliver, and ourselves, over the next several days. We did take bug spray for ticks, chiggers, and mosquitos, so hopefully that helped for us. Then Oliver of course takes a pill to prevent ticket or flea bites that I had just given to him a week earlier. 

Monday afternoon following lunch, we spent reading, and looking at the beautiful surroundings. We went on a late afternoon walk down the road to see what was beyond our camp site. We found the bathroom facilities that included a swing set we would return to upon our return back to our camp site. Following our little walk, we returned to our camp site to prepare for dinner. We were grilling skirt steak with veggies in aluminum foil to make fajitas. We thought we had read on the Eisenhower State Park site that there were full grills on site, but we found only in-ground grill with the ability to do a fire pit from the same location. It worked out well, but took a little bit to get the hang of the fire using charcoal. It took a while to cook the veggies or at least longer than we thought it should take, so Carrie finished them off in a pot over a flame. Overall, the dinner turned out great and following dinner we had a fire pit where we sat around, drank wine, and played games. It was a little chilly that first night, so the fire helped. Oliver started having some reaction to the smoke where he was having problems breathing, so we decided to call it a night and head to bed.

The first night it was really cold in our tent. It was around 45 outside and could feel every bit of it in the tent. From being outside around the fire pit, Oliver was pretty cold or at least we thought he was cold. We kept him bundled up and checked on him throughout the night. I know Carrie and I both commented the next day how cold we were as my nose, shoulders, and arms were cold. Hanging my arm out of the sleeping bag and I could feel the cold take over my whole arm before withdrawing back into the sleeping bag for warmth. 

Carrie and I both commented at how poorly we slept the first night. My issue was that each time I was about to fall asleep, I would hear a train and the whistle from the train. I think they were going all night long about every 30 minutes. It sounded as though they were right outside of our tent. At one point, I thought they were done, but then they started up again about 3 am and went until about 6:30 or 7 with every 30 minutes I could hear the rumble of the freight cars before the train would blow the whistle. It was a bit frustrating, but learned something that first night that Carrie had prepared for as she knew I would likely be snoring without my CPAP machine, so she wore ear plugs, but even then she said she did not sleep well.

The following morning (Tuesday), I got up about 6 am as I could not sleep hearing the train whistles all night. I took Oliver on a short walk to let him out. It was rather nice at 6 am. Still chilly but that was about all. We knew prior to leaving for our camping adventure that there was a chance of rain all three days. We watched the percentages go up and down the weeks leading up to our camping dates. The first day was nice overall with it being cold in the evening. Tuesday the weather said chance of rain 40% and it would start about 9 am. Sure enough, after returning from walking Oliver, Carrie was up for a short time, and then about 9 am it started to rain. It rained constantly until about noon. We remained in the tent the whole time. Having not slept well during the night, we used the time to try and sleep. I slept off and on through the morning while taking pictures and even a video of the rain from within the tent. Not the way we had imagined our first morning camping to occur, but we have to roll with the weather and made the best of the start of our first full day of camping.

The afternoon was much better on Tuesday. We went for a long walk all over the camp site. We made the full loop that we had walked partially on Monday afternoon. We figured out where the beach, other camping sites, and the cabins were located. We returned back to our camp site where we spent the remainder of the afternoon with chairs in front of our tent facing the lake, reading, and drinking beer. This was our second interaction with a fisherman fishing at the “hot fishing spot”. This time I watched him catch fish after fish. It looked like fun and made me want to fish again.

Tuesday night we had planned to grill and fire pit again, but as the evening started, the chill set in again, and it started to sprinkle with forecast saying it would rain until about 11. So, we changed our dinner plans and instead of grilling, we did leftovers from the night before, potatoes, peppers, onions, and cheese in a pot over the gas stove we had taken with us. It turned out great with some tortillas that we warmed over the open flame. As we finished dinner, the rain was picking up a bit more, so we decided to turn into the tent and watch a movie. We set up our cooler so we could easily access for beverages, and then set up the iPad so we could watch a movie we had downloaded prior to leaving from Netflix. A nice cozy evening and we were sleeping by midnight.

Our second night of sleep was much better. Carrie loaned me some ear plugs so I would not have to listen to trains throughout the night. I am not sure I moved the entire night. I woke up about 6 am again, but felt much better after a full-nights sleep. We awoke to a much warmer morning and then sun was shining. It was beautiful out as we got about our day. I took Oliver on a walk and opened the screens on the tent so that light showed in from the front and back of the tent. As I returned from taking Oliver on walk, Carrie was up and preparing for the day. Carrie made us coffee and then eggs, bacon, and cheese along with toast. A perfect morning to finish our camping adventures.

Overall, we were very pleased with Eisenhower State Park at Lake Melvern. The camping site, services, and views were just what we needed to help us start our camping adventures. We both look forward to many more camping adventures to come in the near future. We are already looking at locations and talking about making plans for our next site.