Three things I did not expect to find in Missouri:
- Prickly pear cacti
- ARMADILLOS! Mostly dead, on the side of the road
- Cinco de Mayo festivals
I’ll spare you a picture of the armadillos I’ve seen so far. Locals tell us they never had armadillos until a few years ago; now they’re already becoming a nuisance.
Heavy thunderstorms greeted me in Missouri. All the rivers were in flood, but the Circle B Campground has all of their RV sites some 10 feet or more above the river. Not so for the tent campsites, which looked pretty soggy when I arrived. But the next day dawned clear and breezy, and I headed out to sight-see.
If you ever make it to south-central Missouri, go see Alley Spring and Mill, just west of Eminence. First of all, it’s just darn beautiful. Secondly, it is worth going to see what 81 million gallons of water a day look like, gushing out of the ground. And, if you go in the spring, like we did, there are birds and wildflowers galore to delight the senses.
As the informational brochures tell me, these springs are created by karst—water seeping through porous rocks, which over time creates larger and larger underground caverns. Occasionally, these caverns collapse, and the flowing water becomes a spring on the surface.
There is a 1-½ mile hiking trail that takes you up the hill above the spring, where you can stop at an observation platform to look down on the spring and mill, and compare your view to how it looked in 1900.
The trail then winds back down the mountain, taking you to a shaded, grassy area perfect for picnicking, or just watching the water flow by.
Russ showed up that evening (Saturday), which is when we discovered that Eminence (population 600) was having a weekend-long Cinco de Mayo party. We chose to postpone dinner out until Sunday, when the fracas had died down some. (I mean, there was clog dancing and everything! It wasn’t safe!) In the meantime, I took him to see Alley Mill, and he enjoyed it just as much as I did.
When Russ headed out Monday morning, I thought I’d go see Round Spring and Cave, just a few miles to the north. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a disappointment: not nearly as interesting as Alley Spring, and the cave was closed to visitors. It looked as if it had been for quite some time, possibly as a result of the devastating floods that went through this area in 2017. I did, however, get one nice shot of the old bridge nearby.
And, on the way back, I found some old logging roads that made for a nice hike with the dogs. When we got back, I dragged them into the river, which had dropped considerably in two days, to cool off—such indignation! But they did look more comfortable.
As the evening began to cool down, I was watching a flock of cedar waxwings in the trees above my camp, and saw some of their courting behavior. Two birds would sit side by side on a branch and one bird would carefully pass a small berry or seed to the second bird. That bird would take one hop away, immediately hop back, and hand the gift back. The first bird would then repeat the hop away/hop back, and handoff, with quick touches of their beaks. They looked like nothing so much as two shy teenagers, stealing quick kisses when no one was looking.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) I head west again, this time to Ruark Bluff, on Stockton Lake, about 50 miles from the Kansas border.