Trail of Tears State Park — Attraction in Cape Girardeau

While I am not a state park expert, I have stayed in many of Missouri's state parks, including Lake Wappapello, Van Meter, Mark Twain National Forest, etc. Additionally, I've camped plenty of times all over the state of Missouri in private locations as well. Whoever decided it was a good idea to put a campground next to an active railroad was not thinking. The train rips through every 2-4 hours with its horn blazing all through the night. It's hard to tell from aerial photos, but the train tracks are less than 200' away. Just when you get to sleep here comes the train. 8 pm, 11 pm, 2 am, 5 am, etc. This was quite possibly the worst sleep I have ever gotten in a state park. This alone is worth giving 1 star. I later realized they even put up a sign that says "no refunds for train traffic," which probably is needed because enough people complained about it. If you don't plan to camp here, there are some pretty views, a boat launch ramp, and fishing on the Mississippi River. I think it may be good to visit, but do NOT camp here unless you plan to stay up all night. My only hope in leaving 1 star is that I can save at least one person from getting the world's worst sleep, unfortunately, if you want to camp in a state park there's not a ton of options in this...

We stayed at trail of tears state park in August of 2017 to see the solar eclipse. The park overall is small but very nice. We stayed in the riverside campground in a motorhome with a group. The other campground in this park is much prettier but does not have electric. During our stay the campground “host” continually harassed us about having to move our cars. He was generally rude and was actually yelling at cars to slow down as they entered and left the small loop at one point (none of which were going very fast). The campground was full 1 night. The other nights of that weekend there were several open spots. The campers were mature couples and families. No one at any time was close to disruptive. When we were loading up to leave we had 2 cars parked in the adjacent empty site and he came out waving his arms and telling us we were “pushing the boundaries”. We stated we were leaving and he loudly said “good!” I have run into other hosts that take this position on as if the park was theirs and not the people's. This usually occurs in small podunk areas where some weak minded person has been given 2 ounces of power. This is certainly the case here. Ken the camp host is doing Missouri state parks a great disservice behaving...

Investigative journalist here

Trail of Tears state park is a very ominous place once it starts to get dark. If any of the people in charge of the park see this, just know, I know what is going on in the river, and exactly why the park is protected so well.

Please reach out for a dollar amount agreement, or I will blow the whole top off this charade.

Edit: after a couple years away I'd like to share what i saw.

2 other people and I watched a bright blue ball emerge from the middle of the river. It looked like pure energy and moved in ways that had us flipping out. It turned from one ball to 5 or more separate balls and moving across the water with ease, sliding over embankments so smoothly.

It's was so hot it was catching leaves close to the river bank on fire. It also emmited some kind of light net, it pulsed this "light net" through the air, and we watched this net, smoothly lay over a gravel embankment and slowly dissolve.

It did many other things that we cannot explain. This was close to 11-12PM from the overlook, to the left. We still don't know what we saw and above are the best pics I could get of it with my android.

This is real and we were sober as hell. The whole time we could not believe what we were seeing and it...