Missouri State Parks: Hawn

I was sitting in my apartment, looking at my Christmas tree, dreaming of warmth and camping and spending time outside when it hit me: I never wrote my post on my experiences at Hawn State Park! So, I will reminisce of the warmth of July and the camping trip my fiance and I took to celebrate my big 2-5. 

This was my second birthday in a row that J and I spent the weekend camping, and I have to say, I rather love this new tradition. He let's me plan where I want to go and I make the reservations and then we pack up and go! It is a pretty wonderful deal. 

Hawn State Park is outside of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri and is simply beautiful. 

Pickle Creek

Anyone who ever tries to claim Missouri is not beautiful has never been to Southern Missouri. Though, to be honest, that is not even the only area that is breathtaking. If you haven't noticed yet, I sort of love Missouri. 

Anyway. We loved stopping at a winery near the state park we went to last year, so we decided to do that again this year. Lucky for us, Ste. Gen has some amazing wineries and quite a few to pick from. We had already visited several earlier in the spring when visiting a friend in Farmington, so I did some research to see which wineries that we had not been to ever were near to Hawn State Park.

Answer: Watertower Winery

I am kinda obsessed...

Best discovery ever. Let me tell ya. Found this place and it was gorgeous with green hills and vineyard in background. There was a great indoor sitting area where you can taste their wine choices AND Fridays during the summer they had free brats and hotdogs. So we found some wine we liked and bought a few bottles (and of course opened one to enjoy while we were there) and walked out back to the patio area to enjoy the shockingly not that hot of July evening. 

Just...I can't...

Needless to say, I did not want to leave. And I have been wanting to go back there ever since. I cannot wait until Spring when we can go back there and to my other favorite winery, The Cave Vineyard.

So, we then made our way to Hawn and found our campsite that I had reserved. While, I will always hate the need to do campsite reservations, I must say, the State Parks have a newer feature that I am loving. You can look at each reservable site and see how far away it is from the shower house, how steep of a slope there is, and even shows a picture of it so you can see the surrounding area. Well, let me tell you. I sat there clicking on every dang spot to find the flattest site in the most shade that had some semblance of privacy and I found the perfect spot. Best addition to the website ever! 

All Those Trees and Space!

The campground hosts were immediately incredibly kind. They let us buy wood even though the woodshed was already closed for the night and when they saw my car didn't have room to carry the wood (since we had not unpacked at all yet) the man volunteered to load up his little golf cart and meet us over at our site. My lap very much appreciated not having to hold all the bundles of wood on it.

He offered this service, to take wood bundles and bags of ice over to you, all weekend. I must say, it was quite nice to see campground hosts who obviously loved what they were doing and just wanted to make your trip the best it could be. Those are the people who make me dream about being a campground host when I am retired (Hear that, dear fiance?). 

Saturday we spent hiking around Pickle Creek, which I had been told from various people was a great trail to do. They did not lie. It is a short hike, but such a fun one to take. 

Doing some Explorin'

The hike gives ample opportunities to let you go down to the creek and get in if you want to. We opted to stay out of the water, but we did jump from rock to rock and tree trunks. I highly recommend doing this trail to anyone who might be in Hawn. 

With it being such a short hike, we easily could have done other trails also, but we opted to go back to our campsite and just relax and read. I had not had the chance to just lounge around and read in far too long, and I loved being able to do that outdoors. After doing that for a few hours, I wanted to look around the walk-in campsites to see if it was something I wanted to try at some point. They looked nice, but not quite as nice as the ones at Johnson Shut-Ins. But, it did lead to another area to explore the creek and bluffs. 

I could not be happier with the weather we had that weekend. With the amazing weather it meant it was a bit crowded. The park is only an hour or so away from St. Louis, which makes it an easy place to go to for the weekend. We had several families and groups near us, but everyone was super respectful of quite hours.

My only regret was not being able to go to the ranger talk event that went on Saturday. One of these days we will get ourselves organized enough that we have dinner cooked and consumed before those talks occur so we can go to one. We did not want to rush, so instead we stayed at our campsite and enjoyed our food, had a beer and sat around our fire. 

Yummm

All in all, I would highly recommend Hawn State Park to anyone looking for a park to camp at or even for a day trip of hiking!