Eric Krassinger

I went to Lake of the Ozarks on a last minute trip this past weekend. I was a bit worried because I wasn’t sure what the sleeping situation was, if I was going to get any boat time, or if it would be fun at all since I only knew a 4 out of the 29 people going. Fortunately it was a complete blast and blew away all my expectations.

We started our expedition late Thursday afternoon. It was a fun ride but did take quite a bit time to get there since it was on the other side of the lake but fortunately the “new” bridge did save us some time. Even though it was dark, we put on our suits and hit the water by the dock for at least 3 hours.

Friday was an awesome day. The other 3 guys (one being the owner of the boat and house) that were down there for the day went golfing so we got the boat all day. After we bought a new battery and I made some boat repairs, we were on the water all day. We eventually picked up the 3 other guys around 5. Basically we just drove the boat around and explored all the amazing big house down at the Lake. My one question is who is owning all of these houses. I don’t know of an area in St Louis that has this many big houses. All the house would be million dollar places if they were not on the lake so I can only imagine how much they are worth since they are on water. We stopped every once in a while to swim around. We did try to find Party Cove but we never found it. We found out later that we were super close to it … we missed it by one turn. I did also do some cliff diving. Pictures of me jumping along with the rest of the trip will be posted here once I get them from Josh. Needless to say, here is a picture of my arm in which I guess is a casualty of me jumping from a 35′ cliff. This only started to popup Monday and it could only be from jumping. We concluded the night by playing drinking games once all the girls arrived at our place.

On Saturday, we woke up somewhat early to have a huge breakfast of homemade B&Gs, eggs, bacon, cinnamon rolls, and other breakfast food. Once finished we headed over to the main house to enjoy boating and waverunner action. Amazingly enough, no one really wanted to boat. More people wanted to use the waverunner but it was not like people were fighting over it. I think we went through about 30 gallons of gas alone that day on the waverunner. I did go boating and enjoyed some water skiing and tubing activities. After we finished that, we picked up the girls and went cove hopping.

On Saturday night we decided to go out and we chose the Horny Toad since it was right across the cove. I had been there a couple times in college but not since. Man has that entire cove changed. They now have a hotel and everything. It was really built up along with the other bars but unfortunately it was dead. We should have gone to Shady Gators which was in the same cove and extremely packed but the group thought HT was better. I talked to some regulars on Sunday and they said Horny Toad is really facing a lot of trouble. Shady Gators and the very recently opened Lazy Gators is kicking their butt. We finished the night with playing beer pong till about 6 in the morning.

This trip really did raise my desire to buy a boat. I even though it would be cool to buy a place at the Lake but I feel like you would need a big place like we had so you could have a big group out. Needless to say, I think I have almost the same amount of fun on the river plus I can sleep it my own bed and its a “short” drive so keeping a boat on the river seems like more of a reality. It would be nice to get like a 24′ or 27′ boat that I could also take out to the Lake of the Ozarks for a couple weekend outings but that would require me getting a truck too so I doubt that is happening. With that said, I am a little afraid to drive a boat around other objects like when pulling into a dock so not sure if this is a reality or if this would go away with more experience.

Needless to say this trip was fun and I am somewhat glad that a bunch of people backed out because it gave us more boat time. We were supposed to have 29 but we only ended up having 18 or 19 people.

I also never heard so much “hooker face”, “Helen Keller”, and “F C U ME.” I don’t believe those are the real song titles but might as well be.