Perry State Park & Trails at Perry Reservoir, close to North Topeka, Kansas

4/28/2023 to 5/2/2023


    We were pleasantly surprised by how much we liked this park. Our water view with sunrises was breathtaking, the trail system is great, and we had easy access to the water for paddle boarding. 



    Our site, like all sites, was very unlevel on loose gravel. Our auto-leveling system raised our right wheel way off the ground, and the golf ball leveling technique Paige described had our ball barreling toward the front of the RV. But it actually wasn't bad. Being level side to side seems more important than front to back. And now that we don't have any excrement to leak out of our plumbing system we weren't too worried about getting completely level. 

    When we got here on Friday, the park was almost empty, but quickly filled up. Our group of neighbors right outside our door had three large golden retrievers, often off leash and interested in Annie (but nice to her). Appeared to be three generations having a family reunion, all sitting outside our door most of the time. They also played music, but at least it was music we liked. We had a fairly private space in front of our RV and down the hill a little so our outside fireplace time was very pleasant. Plus, the park cleared out on Sunday, so then we had almost the whole campground to ourselves for two days. 

    It was particularly busy on the weekend because they were having a kids' bass tournament. The sunrise picture above shows the boats lining up to go out at 6am. We watched some of the kids weighing their catch and posing for pictures. 




    We had to drive to get to the trail system, but well worth the short drive.  All the trails were well marked and correctly described, so we knew what we were getting into. The first day we took the Skyline trail,  which is the blue trail surrounding the other blue trails in the photo below. On subsequent days we combined a bit of the Skyline with other trails in interesting combinations. We saw wild turkeys and deer, but didn't get pictures. 



    
Picture of Annie on Logan's Run Trail:



    The first night we arrived, a park ranger banged on our door in pretty scary fashion. Annie went crazy. Turned out we had neglected to get a vehicle pass for the CRV. We had to go to a kiosk to get a pass THAT NIGHT. No waiting for the next morning. There were a whole line of vehicles lined up, so we weren't the only ones getting a knock on our door that night. We learned (at this our last Kansas site for seven years) that the Kansas park system requires either an annual pass ($25) or daily passes ($5) for parking for an extra vehicle. We had paid the camping fee months ago online. In retrospect we had paid for daily passes at Clinton State Park, but we thought it must be specific to that park.  At the other Kansas parks the offices weren't open when we arrived and we didn't realize we needed passes and no ranger knocked on our door. We were too busy struggling to find our campsite to pay attention I guess. So different from the Texas system we know and love.

    Now on to Iowa. 

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