Missouri State Parks: St. Francios

I meant to write this post a month ago, but apparently I got rather busy. So here we go.

My boyfriend and I spent my birthday weekend (July 20th weekend) camping at St. Francios State Park. This was my first time camping this summer and my first experience of St. Francios. I was very happily surprised by this park! We reserved a campsite for Friday through Saturday because I have learned the hard way too many times that camping on weekends in Missouri is not possible is you do not have a reservation. I should be excited that our park system is so popular, but I miss the days when you used to be able to spur of the moment plan a camping trip. St. Francios was not even on my list of places I wanted to go to that weekend, but every other place I tried to reserve a spot at was already full. 

Turned out we could have gone camping here without reservations because there were empty spots available in the basic campsite area, but I still would not take the risk of not having a spot. 

I did some research on the super handy state parks website and saw that St. Francios was on a river, so I decided that would be a good option for us since we were going in the middle of July. In Missouri. Which, you know, tends to be hot. The river (The Big River) was nice. The area had a nice beach and the water got deep enough that people were floating but also shallow enough that J and I sat in a few inches of water for awhile and enjoyed the day. However, I must say that I felt a bit overwhelmed with the amount of people (and the quality of people...) that were in the river. It was fine, and fun, minus one family that decided to set off a fire cracker only a few feet away from us. Because, you know, setting off a loud exploding thing is a smart thing to do on sand, around a bunch of people, surrounded by cliff walls. Plus, that is one of the few things that is not allowed in State Parks. 

We went on a hike Saturday morning and it was beautiful! I love hiking new places, and this did not disappoint. It had lots of hills and you had the cross the creek several times. There were a few times I requested we stopped and rest because I got tired. I would love to go back there and do more hiking. 

View of the creek during the hike

The worst part of the camping trip was the rain. It did not rain very long, but it was intense for the hour or so that it did rain, which was not that big of an issue because we just napped during that time. However, it made everything soaked. I felt like I was constantly trying to dry things out. We had gathered wood earlier in the day and it all got really wet, so dinner making was hard. It took us a long time to get the fire going well enough for cooking. We ended up having a late dinner that night (foil packs, yummm) but we snacked on local cheese and sausage that we bought at St. Francios Winery. If you are ever in that area, go to that winery. We stopped there Friday before getting to the park, and it was awesome. We did a wine tasting and bought a few bottles. They sold sausage and cheese from St. Gen, MO. 

This state park does not have much of a visitor center and it does not have a camp store. You can buy fire wood and ice, that's it. There is a Wal-Mart in a nearby town, which we made a run to for those forgotten items. But know that you would not be able to get any items within the state park. 

I will totally go back here and J and I already discussed wanting to go again next year!