Reply to Steamboat Junction Campground (Bluffton)

Very nice people, good rates and incredibly good hot showers!!!

This campground and the property it sits on was my childhood home (circa 1967 - 1981) It was a farm at the time (cattle, horses, chickens, 300 acres farmland) I grew up running around this area, back when the Missouri Pacific railroad traveled up and down what is now the Katy Trail. My family sold the farm after my grandparents passed away and we lost contact with it altogether until my sister was looking at a biking magazine and saw a picture of the place in the magazine. Imagine our surprise! The house that sits on the property is actually an old riverboat that was converted to a house around the early 1900's. My great grandfather bought the farm in 1920's or '30s and lived there until my grandpartents both passed away in the early 1980s. The entire area is a wonderful place to hike, camp, hunt, and fish. The Missouri river is just a few hundred yards away from the front door of the house. Over the years, we found dozens and dozens of arrowheads and several indian burial sites. On top of the hill that sits just east of the house is a really old cemetary, with most headstones dating late 1800s. The cemetary was an awfully scary place for me as a child.

I dream of the "farm" often and hope to go back and visit it sometime soon. It is wonderful to know that a place I hold so dear to my heart has turned out to be a place where people can actually visit and go camping. I can't imagine what the campgrounds look like, as they did not exist when I was a child.

Hope you all can enjoy the area as much as I did growing up. If you look around, you might find a few trees with my initials carved into them.

We've camped at Steamboat Junction and we've stopped several times to enjoy the shade. It is a welcomed stop along the trail and the owners are friendly. Each time we've talked to them over the past few years though, they always mention that business is down and that they are thinking about closing. Last summer the owner expressed concern that no one knew that they were even there. She said that many bikers passed on by and never slowed. If you haven't stayed there, check out the secluded campground and the little cottage (air conditioned) if they fit into your Katy plans in '09.