Methodist Cove Campground in Alma, Nebraska May 28 – June 4, 2025

We spent the morning of Wednesday, May 28th taking our time packing up at Minooka Campground. Cindy had a 10:15 am telehealth appointment with her PCP (though he didn’t get on the call until 40 minutes AFTER the scheduled time). We then walked Bella, had lunch and left around 12:30 pm for a short 2 1/2 hour drive west and then north to Methodist Cove Campground in Alma, Nebraska. With a stop at the grocery store on the way, we arrived around 4:30 pm in the middle of a rain storm.

Methodist Cove Campground

Methodist Cover Campground has 133 campsites with hook-ups ranging from full to electric-only. We had an electric-only site on the outside rim so that our large back window faced out onto Harlan County Lake. It made for a beautiful view most of our stay.

The campground has a large, heated shower house with flush toilets and a single washer/dryer in both the men’s and women’s section. There were also several vault toilet buildings spread out around the campground. There were community water spigots also spread out around the campground, as well as a dump station and a children’s playground.

The main road is asphalt with secondary roads being gravel. Just outside the campground is a boat ramp with scores of parking spaces. There’s a fish-cleaning station with a grinder and running water near there as well. And overflow parking when the boat ramp parking lot becomes full. Which it did many times over the course of our stay.

About 4 miles to the east of our campground are two full-service marinas at the far eastern end of Harland County Lake, one on the north side and one on the south side.

Our site was pea gravel and very wet when we arrived in the rain to set up. Mostly level but when we used a couple of levelers on one side they sank down into the soggy gravel once Nomad was parked on them.

Harlan County Lake

Harlan County Lake is the second largest lake in the state of Nebraska and comprises 13,400 acres of surface water. The lake is 9 miles long with 75 miles of shoreline and a maximum depth of 60 feet. It’s a VERY popular lake with boaters and fishermen.

Right behind our site was a rock/gravel jetty extending out into the lake for about 1,000 feet. Lots of non-boating fishermen made use of it during our stay.

Pizza!

After everything was set up and we had dried off, Cindy decided that, rather than cooking, she would like for us to drive the 3 miles back into Alma to a pizza restaurant that was highly recommended on an RV site as having really good pizza. I had no argument as I’m always up for a really good pizza.

But, it took them almost an hour to make our order and even then, as hungry as we were, it wasn’t really very good at all.

Can’t believe all the reviews you read, I guess. Or it was a bad night for the kitchen, as we saw others complaining about their long wait as well.

It continued raining all Wednesday night and into early Thursday morning.

Exploring

Thursday we walked around the entire developed part of the campground as we usually do to get a feel for the layout of where we’re staying. It rained a little more in the mid-morning and early afternoon, so it was mostly a lazy day for us.

In the late afternoon/evening we walked down a gravel road to an unused part of the campground. Saw lots of rabbits and Cindy was happy to spot a deer on the horizon. She also spotted several marijuana plants growing in a specific area. Not sure how she knows what one looks like but, oh well. Medical marijuana is legal in Nebraska and possession of small amounts carry only a civil conviction rather than a criminal one.

Friday was laundry day. Rather than spend a lot of time using the single washer/dryer in the campground shower house, I drove into Alma to a laundromat. It was different from most such places, but I was still glad it was there. While I was gone Cindy baked up some fresh homemade wheat bread that was delicious!

Saturday was another “do nothing” day. I finished slogging through the mess of a book, “Original Sin”, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. I posted my review of it on my writing and book blog.

Saturday night we finished watching the second season of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” on DVD. I know from past experience that the stories beginning in the third season are going to be much better.

Happy Birthday AnnMarie!

Sunday was my daughter’s 50th birthday. As Cindy says, we’re much too young to have a 50-year old child, lol! But AnnMarie is still young at heart so we’ll go with that making us young as well.

We had a nice video call with her and she opened our card and laughed when she saw the “Yes I’m Really 50 Years Old” button on the card. We’ve asked her to wear it to work so everyone there will know she is 50 years old too. I also sent her a booklet of things that happened in her birth year of 1975, the kind you usually find in Cracker Barrel stores or similar places.

And I posted a little photo collage of her last 10 years on my personal blog. I had already done a post of her life back on her 40th birthday, so this one was just a little catch up with photos of the last decade.

Thunderbolts*

In the afternoon we drove into Alma to see a matinee showing of “Thunderbolts*” at their Parrot Theater. One of the cleanest and nicest theaters I’ve seen in a while. Beats out the big chains tremendously. Tickets were $3 per adult! A small popcorn, box of junior mints and large coke for $5.50!!!! All together, we paid $11.50 which is unbelievable. We didn’t go see this movie when it first came out because a single senior ticket at AMC or Regal was $19.00.

There are some movies (like the upcoming Superman movie on July 11th) that I WILL pay the highway robbery price because I want to see it that badly. But most movies I will not do that. Prices are astronomical and audiences are generally rude. If I am able to wait to see a movie either later in its run when prices are cheaper and audiences are diminished, or when it makes it to a streaming service I already pay for, or when its released on DVD, then I will. We waited on the last Marvel movie “Captain America: Brave New World” until it recently came out on DVD. I thought we might do the same with “Thunderbolts*”. But we got fortunate with this wonderful theater in little Alma, Nebraska (population 1,025).

And it was a very good movie, by the way.

Aurora Borealis

That night at bedtime I set my alarm and got up at 1:30 am Monday in the hopes of seeing The Northern Lights. Predictions were that, due to recent solar flares, it might be possible to see the Aurora Borealis as far south as San Diego, California in the U.S. Estimates for our location were between 2 and 3 am.

Sadly, I braved the windy and chilly early morning hours outside for naught. But it’s always worth a try.

Pheasant Trail

Monday morning we drove down to the east end of the lake to look at the marinas, but there wasn’t much to see.

Then we came back and hiked a portion of the Pheasant Trail that runs 2.85 miles from our campground west to Alma, all along the shore of Harlan County Lake. It was a hot day, but with lots of cool blowing winds that were preceding the approaching severe weather we would get later that night. It’s a nice, paved walking and bike trail and if we were younger we might have tried to walk the round-trip 5.5 miles. But we’re not so we didn’t.

We did see one deer that was hiding in the trees along the path until we approached and then it bolted out of sight. Still, those kinds of things make Cindy’s day.

Stormy Night

Monday night into Tuesday was filled with stormy weather and torrential rains. We got some video of the lightning and thunder across and above the lake that you can see in the accompanying video on our YouTube Channel. The winds at the beginning of the storm were pretty ferocious. Cindy was white-knuckling her recliner armrests, but I kept assuring her that I had safely ridden out 55 mph winds from a hurricane in Ocala a couple of years back. It didn’t help her much.

I was more worried about the people beside us and across from us who were staying in tents.

But Tuesday’s light of day revealed they had both come through the night without being blown away.

The rain continued until about 4 pm Tuesday, so we only got to take Bella on one walk that day after the rains had passed. She’s used to one in the morning and one in the late afternoon/early evening depending on when the sun is going to set. But, like us, she’d rather have one walk in dry weather as opposed to any in the rain.

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