Finger Lakes State Park - Family Camping Weekend
In early July, we spent a weekend at Finger Lakes State Park, near Columbia, MO. We had never visited this park, and all we knew about it is that is catered to off-road vehicles, and had several areas for activities revolving around those. We were a little concerned about how noisy the park would be, but, we wanted to be near Columbia, so we decided to give it a shot, anyhow.
Upon arrival, we were relieved to find out how large the park was, and that the campground was all the way at the north end. This put quite a bit of distance between the campground, and the OHV trails. The only time that we heard any bikes or ATV’s was when someone that was camping there would leave their site, or return.
My parents arrived from Nebraska shortly after we did. Our sites were in separate loops, since they have a fifth wheel, and required 50amp hookups (we were in site 10, and they were 13). However, there were still probably only about a couple hundred yards between our sites.
The campground was nice, and well kept up. The shower house/bathroom was clean and had full plumbing. There were only a couple negatives that I can say about the campground. One was that my brother’s non-electric site (site 35), was a little small and uneven. The other would be that the premium electric sites (50 amp), were a little small for larger rigs. Most were around 50 ft long, and about 12 ft wide. My parents have a 37 ft fifth wheel, and they had a hard time wiggling the truck into the spot once it was unhooked.
We took advantage of one of the lakes to find relief from the summer heat. We got out our paddleboards, as well as some other inflatable items, and floated around the lake. The park also has kayaks and paddleboards available to rent. One of the somewhat unique features of the park is that it has a 4.5 mile water trail in that lake. There were buoys throughout the lake to lead the way down that trail.
We did learn a couple things on this trip. On the first night, we arrived back to our campsite at dusk, and realized that the raccoons had already visited our site. I think we got back just in time to keep them from making too much of a mess with the dog food. We’ve dealt with raccoons enough that we should’ve known to put everything away before we left, but we didn’t know that we’d be gone that long. What we didn't know was that Bagheera will try to chase the raccoons, even though we’ve never had him even pull on his cable tie out before. We typically only put two or three of plastic stakes in the swivel tie out that we use. The first time he went after one of the raccoons, he broke off those stakes (we have now replaced with metal ones). We then wrapped the cable around the trash/light post at the campsite, while we were trying to get ready for bed. Bagheera then saw a raccoon in the other direction, and went after it, this time breaking the metal d-ring on his collar. His tags went flying, and we had to recover those in the dark. We have now purchased a heavier collar, so we shouldn’t have that issue anymore, either.
The other thing that we learned was concerning our Jackery Explorer 1000. Up to this point, we really had not had the opportunity to test it much. Since my brother uses a CPAP, and was going to be in a non-electric site, we offered to let him use it. Not only did it run the CPAP all night, but due to the heat, he also ran a full size box fan all night (with 8% battery left)! We have to say that we were pleased with how it worked.
We enjoyed our weekend at Finger Lakes State Park, and will probably return there at some point in time. It’s always fun when you can spend time with family while camping. We’re just glad that we didn’t write this park off as being only for the off-road crowd.