RV Travels with Dakota Duo: Nov. 6 already

Our day off, Tuesday, was rainy, we stayed inside and rested. Wednesday back to work for the 4 days. On Thursday after lunch, they announced we would be working 11 hour days on Friday and Saturday. Start at 5:30 am, finish at 5:00 pm. (Camperforce workers could end their day at 4:00 if they wanted to.) So we were up at 4:00 am and in to work for the earlier start. The day seemed to go quickly and then at noon they announced we would end the day at 4:30 after all and we would not work the extra hour on Saturday. All good news!
Saturday night on the way home we stopped and picked up BBQ baby back ribs at Ross's BBQ Shack. Yum! We bought a slab of ribs to go so we could go home and watch football. The waitress there tempted us to stay, showing us the full plates she was serving others with ribs, corn on the cob, potatoes and then told us about the fresh peach and apple cobblers they have for desserts. She kept laughing while she was teasing us, we promised to come back again and eat there.

Sunday we were up early and so we went to 8:00 Mass. Had a young lady cantoring this morning with a pianist, a nice change. Afterward we went to the grocery store to buy a treat of cinnamon rolls for brunch. When we got home, we could see we had water leaking from the motorhome. Once again, the plug on the hot water heater had cracked, creating a leak. But, the captain was prepared, had a supply of extra plugs and got it changed in short order.

Then we changed into our hiking clothes and headed northwest of Independence to Elk City State Park. They have a reservoir with a large lake, campgrounds and 4 hiking trails. It was a gorgeous sunny day. We started with the Green Thumb Nature Trail, going through the woods with educational signs along the way. The trail is covered with the common white gravel we see here in Kansas, but was totally covered by leaves, so we had to watch for the trees along the way that were marked with white paint. We saw many colors of leaves and crossed the same brook three times.
Then we drove up the hills to the lookout point and hiked on the Post Oak Nature Trail. From here we saw the dam road below, the lake and the colors across the lake. Again, the trail was covered by leaves. There were orange paint marks on the trees, but because the beginning was not marked clearly, we actually walked the trail backwards and only saw the orange marks when we stopped and looked backward. We could not have got lost on this trail though, it was all on one level and the lake was on one side, the road on the other. When done, we drove down across the dam road and found the campground below the dam. There were half a dozen people fishing there, looked like they were catching the catfish the information described. We took pictures of the colorful trees from down below, the sun was hitting them from the right angle.