Today was a day of exploring. Whenever we see a new park or campground close to where we are staying we like to take a day trip to see if the location could be a future camping site.

Today’s adventure was visiting a Corp of Engineer managed area that included Melvern Lake and the Outlet (Melvern) Campground. The park was approximately 60 miles from Hillsdale State Park and not that far off I35. This makes the location ideal for when we are driving from Wisconsin to Oklahoma for the winter.

The Corp of Engineers built a dam that has the large lake with many smaller lakes and stream next to it. We saw multiple fishermen on the lake and stream. The campground has two areas with sites next to the water. One of the two areas only had Electric and water. The other location has full hookups.

We really liked the side with only electric and water. The sites had great views of the lake and access to the walking trail.

We saw at 3 types of birds on the lake. A blue heron that was posing in the grass for us. We also saw a flock of ruddy ducks and red breasted mergansers. I pulled out the scope to take pictures. The pictures are OK but not great. The ducks and mergansers were too far away and the slightly blowing wind wobbled the scope and camera.

As usual, I had to commemorate the event with a couple selfies 🙂

The final pictures are from the sites we thought might be good sites to reserve in the future.

Site 49

• Pull through
• E50 / water
• Hookups would need to go under trailer to connect
• great water view
• good star link

Site 37

• Back In
• E50 / water
• great water view
• Most likely good Starlink

Site 3

• Back in
• E50 / water
• ok, but not as good water views. greater view of the grassy area
• Most likely good Starlink

Site 47 (other side of the lake)

• Back in
• Large double wide
• Full Hookups
• Good water views
• Next to bathhouse with laundry
• Next to pier and cement walkway to pier
• Possible or partial Starlink