How We Ended Up at Lost Valley Creek for our Thanksgiving Meal

I don’t remember the timeline of everything that happened during the pandemic. Like most awful things, blessedly, I’ve forgotten much of it. But somewhere between October and November 2021, it was apparent that my 9-year-old was going to qualify for his first COVID vaccine shot soon, but not in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. We’d kept him home from school, doing distance learning the whole time up until then, and no matter how much I was looking forward to being with family again during a holiday, it just wasn’t worth giving up the 19 months that I’d put into keeping him safe to let my guard down. And, deflated, that was that. We were facing another holiday alone.

My husband, Chris, knew how sad I was. He put his heart into planning out a menu for us, trying his best to lift me back up. The thing is though, out of the four of us, he’s the only one that likes turkey. The boys don’t like cranberries or sweet potatoes. Which leaves us with stuffing and potatoes and gravy. I love Thanksgiving, but it’s not for the food. I simply could not get my head wrapped around putting that much effort into making a big meal again that no one would eat, and pretending that it was a normal Thanksgiving, when I just wanted to be somewhere else.

So where else did I want to be?

One of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned these past three years is that when Option A does not work out, and Option B sucks, think of an Option C. Option C will not be better than Option A, or it would have been Option A… But Option C can be a lot better than Option B with some creativity.

Eden Falls at Lost Valley at the Buffalo National River

During the pandemic, I thought of our car like a spaceship. We could, and did, travel everywhere safely inside our car. The only place we stepped indoors was to use the bathroom and walk to our hotel rooms, which I usually booked as motels since they didn’t have hallways. I was an expert at ordering things I needed ahead of time at Target in a city that we were going to drive through, and ordering food to go from restaurants. I had a whole routine of decontaminating hotel rooms, wiping things down, blowing in as much air as I could from outside A/C units, and we brought our own sleeping bags and pillows. When we got where we were going, we spent all of our time exploring outdoors.

By this point in the pandemic, we had taken road trips out to Wyoming where we went backpacking through the Wind River Range, we slipped down to the Smoky Mountains to enjoy some fall colors while still participating in distance learning and remote working, we spent a month in Arizona, Nevada and Utah, taught the kids how to snorkel in the national parks in Florida, and travelled to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan during fall break.

None of us honestly were super excited thinking about getting in a car again, but I did start staring at a map, trying to think of a good option, because I was determined to make the moments that we were thankful for this Thanksgiving.

We could take one day off before Thanksgiving, so that meant we had 5 days plus the evening on Tuesday to fit in a road trip. We live in Minnesota. Driving north, west, and east all seemed like ridiculous ideas late in November, both from worrying about getting caught in a snowstorm as well as trying to stay warm enough while being outdoors. So that left south, with clearly not enough time to drive the Gulf of Mexico. Pretty heavily constrained in my creative options at this point… That left me with Missouri and Arkansas.

Periodically, you hear in the news of somebody finding a diamond at Crater of the Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, and each time Chris saw such a headline, he would mention that we should go there. Apparently, this was going to be our moment.

Chris was all in with this idea. My 9-year-old thought that idea of going on a road trip to dig in the dirt with his parents was awesome! And my 13-year-old, well, we will call him a good sport since he was not excited to get back in the car.

And just like that, I was happy again, finding places to see in the Ozarks, and realizing that we could meet up with some good friends that we dive with who live down there. So, I’m booking hotels, downloading maps, and buying prospecting mining pans. About a week before we leave I remember we are going to be traveling on Thanksgiving… What are we going to eat? Where are we going to eat???

I have no idea if fast food is open on Thanksgiving. I suppose they have to be, since so many people travel, but I’m not sure that I really want to eat McDonalds on Thanksgiving. And we aren’t eating inside restaurants, so that pretty much crosses this idea out even if we could find someplace open. And I have no idea how to make a Thanksgiving meal in a hotel room.

Options? Looking at the itinerary I had planned for Thanksgiving, we weren’t really going to be near any cities until late anyway when we checked into the hotel. So, Thanksgiving out of our car? I’ve got to do better than sandwiches.

We go camping – and we cook while we camp. If we stay at the trailhead for supper, we can use our cooking stove. And now I’m circling back to stuffing and potatoes. Not really a meal to brag about from home, but perfect for hiking!

Thanksgiving Menu Prepared at a Trailhead

So this was our menu:

Stuffing with canned chicken and gravy

Boxed potatoes – using dry milk

Hawaiian rolls with butter

Cherry pie heated over the stove

Sparkling grape juice

Our Thanksgiving Holiday Adventure

So how did it turn out? Epic, in its own perfect way.

We bought some new car games, including a trivia game, and enjoyed playing that most of Tuesday night. The hotel we stayed at was incredibly quiet and had an empty pool that we enjoyed to ourselves.

On Wednesday, we stopped at Bridal Cave in Missouri. The cave itself was pretty small, but it is the prettiest cave I have ever been in. That one piece of cave bacon in Jewel Cave in the Black Hills of South Dakota that we get so excited about? In Bridal Cave, there were sheets upon sheets upon more sheets of cave bacon. We really enjoyed this quick stop.

We also stopped at Ha Ha Tonka State Park to stretch our legs a bit towards the end of the day and explore the castle grounds.

Thanksgiving Day we started in Branson, which I would love to go back to in a non-pandemic time period to see some of the things indoors. We went on a self-guided golf-cart tour through Lost Canyon Cave. We had fun on the golf cart with Chris driving us through the cave and then along the nature trail, but it was so cold that morning, and the cave part of the trek was pretty short. Not sure I would recommend this due to the cost of the tour.

We spent the rest of our day along the Buffalo National River in the Ozark Mountains. We hiked up a trail along the Indian Creek trying to find the Eye of the Needle. The trail was fun to explore because it followed a creek bed with several obstacles. Eventually we got stuck though and couldn’t figure out how to climb around the creek which was filled with cold water. But I really enjoyed our time on this trail.

We ended our day at the Lost Valley Creek and hiked to Eden Falls. This hike included a cave that we explored by crawling through on our knees until it opened up into a tall waterfall. This was probably my favorite hike of the whole trip.

Waterfall inside Eden Cave at Lost Valley Creek

Back at the car, the sun was starting to set, and our biggest problem making supper was trying to stay warm without having a fire. Was our meal amazing? Not really. However, when you’ve been hiking the whole day, honestly, anything warm tastes great. Did we have a beautiful table spread? No. We were so cold that we ate each thing as it was ready, and then cleaned dishes as fast as we could. Did we look ridiculous with a camping stove and all of our stuff spread across a picnic table on Thanksgiving? Absolutely! We happily shouted “Happy Thanksgiving!” at everyone as they passed us. I’m sure we made a good laugh for them. It was the perfect Thanksgiving for us in 2021, even though I would never have guessed I would find myself heating up canned chicken for Thanksgiving dinner.

Thanksgiving meal at Lost Valley Trailhead

We did not find any diamonds in Crater of the Diamonds the next day. We stayed about a half a day searching, digging, and sifting with our pans. The water for sifting though was incredibly cold though - so we left most of that work to Chris.

I thought everyone went shopping on Black Friday - Nope! Look how many people there were using the day to dig in the dirt!

Since we were nearby, we stopped over at Hot Springs National Park before going to our hotel for the evening. Honestly, not my favorite National Park. I’m not sure that I still quite understand why a bunch of old bath houses made a National Park, but I didn’t get to enjoy a hot bath there. Maybe if I had, it would make sense to me.

One of many bath houses at Hot Springs National Park

Saturday was probably the best day of our trip. We joined up with our friends at Mt Nebo State Park for a beautiful hike around the rim, and then we made smores for the kiddos, and thoroughly enjoyed the laughter friendships bring.

The last hike of our trip was to Whitaker Point, where we happened to catch an engagement. The boys thought that was really cool to see, and we spent the rest of the hike back to the car answering questions about our own engagement.

Topping Saturday off was a waterslide at our hotel that I had been keeping a secret in case it was busy and we didn’t feel comfortable going. But we had that slide all to ourselves! So many things to be thankful for.

A pretty great plan C for our holiday weekend and one that we will always remember.

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