Author Archives: Jill and Bud

I booked us into the campground at the Greenville Recreation Area because it had full hook ups and was only $12 a night for us.

As an Army Corps of Engineers campground it has the hoped for level, paved sites. In fact the whole campground is unusually flat, since we’re in the hills of southeast Missouri.

On my first walk with Matey I was surprised to come across what looked like a city sidewalk running along the campground road.

I soon discovered that the recreation area is built on the former site of Greenville, MO.

It has sidewalks running along streets that have become part of a bike trail.

And sidewalks that now just run through the woods.

It has street signs, but the streets are gone.

The campground shares space with old foundations…

and an old cemetery.

So what happened to Greenville?

This level site is on the floodplain of the St. Frances River. The flood of 1935 was the eighth major flood since the town was established in 1818. Ironically, when a flood control dam was started downriver in 1939 it was expected that the town would flood more often and to a greater extent as it would be within the high water pool of the newly created Wappapello Lake.

This is a piling for the bridge that now takes traffic on US 67 over the St. Frances River and over the entrance to the Greenville Recreation Area. If you look at the high water marks and dates that are painted here you can see that they were right. The highest mark before the dam was built was the flood of 1915, midway up the round part of the piling. If you look at the water depth on the house in the 1935 flood, you realize that the flood of 2011 would have completely covered every building in the town.

Except that in 1940 they moved the town two miles to higher ground. About 40 homes were moved. Other buildings were torn down and rebuilt.

It is still a small town.

But it still has the courthouse and remains the county seat of Wayne County, Missouri.

Its old site is left to be discovered by campers like us.

Two days ago it hit the high seventies, but this morning when we woke up it was winter.

We’re still in Kentucky at Columbus-Belmont State Park. At least the paved walks and roadways were bare, so I could walk Matey.

Some people find this beautiful, and while I admit a covering of snow does lighten things up, I prefer my brightness from the sun.

To me this just looks (and is) too cold.

Sunday we drove south and crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky very close to its confluence with the Mississippi.

There were barges everywhere, probably waiting to make it through the shallow river.

Now we’re along the Mississippi in Kentucky at Columbus-Belmont State Park. And there is a lot of commerce on the river here, as has been the case historically. Kentucky tried to stay neutral during the civil war. But because this is a bluff along the Mississippi between the confluence of the Ohio and the northern border of the Confederate States, General Polk of the Confederates came here immediately to fortify this as a defensive position.

He had 13,000 troops and 10,000 slaves and they dug miles of huge trenches.

The park preserves about 10% of the earthworks.

They also have this cannon that was dug up about twenty-five years ago from under 40 feet of earth.

Polk also had a giant chain stretched across the river. It was held up by flat boats and anchored on either shore. They could adjust the height of the chain by adding or removing boats. Unfortunately for the Confederates, they pulled out too many of the boats and the waves and current caught the chain and broke it. This section of chain and one anchor were uncovered in a landslide on the banks and are now displayed in the park.

The whole enterprise did not work out well for Polk. He had diverted so many troops to this defensive position that the line was weak to the east. The Union army was able to take that territory and cut off Columbus. Polk had to abandon the site in less than a year and the Union held it for the rest of the war.

Happily for us preserving these earthworks has created a beautiful public space along the Mississippi.

The trees have grown undisturbed and there are some towering specimens.

The campground is very nice, with a number of sites, like ours, that have full hook-ups…

and have a wonderful view out over the Mississippi.

You can tell this is an old campground, the sites are pretty small and not at all level. No, we did not crash the Toyota into the tree, that’s just the only way it would fit on our site. But it is worth it because this is one of the prettiest and most unusual parks we’ve visited.

We’ve taken three short hikes here. The first was a loop up to a rocky peninsula that overlooked the park road.

The neck of the peninsula has a rock wall running all the way across it. This wall was built over 1,000 years ago and archaeologists have no idea why, but they do not think is was defensive, even though the local name for this site is the stone fort.

The end of the peninsula is quite rocky and drops off abruptly. A pretty and interesting spot for sure.

Yesterday we took the Giant City Nature Walk. After a short walk through the woods we came to this wooden walkway.

At the far end the path takes you between huge sandstone rocks, the “streets” of Giant City. The sandstone was broken apart as the last glaciers melted.

The size and regularity of these rocks are impressive.

Even the graffiti is fascinating.

This very narrow passage led up and under…

this balanced rock.

A second walkway with stairs brought you down and around to the other side of the formation.

There was a very long undercut shelf on this side, you can just see another hiker on the far end of the shelf.

Today we took the Trillium Trail through the aptly named Fern Rock Conservation Area.

Again we were walking by sandstone cliffs.

The cliffs had large overhangs.

This rock was a narrow wedge, you can see Bud’s walking stick, which was almost as long as the width of the rock.

We thought these were even bigger than the rocks at the Giant City site.

Storms went through last night, but it was still dry behind this rock under the overhang.

Because the cliffs face north it is cool and damp, besides the ferns there is moss and I found one of my favorite plants, these flattened little liverworts. Both mosses and liverworts are non vascular plants, so they can’t transport water from roots, they need a very moist site so water can seep into all of their cells.

We met some hikers who spotted this critter. I think it is a Northern Slimy Salamander. It has no lungs and gets oxygen through its skin and the lining of its mouth, so it also needs a moist environment. I was thrilled to see these decidedly non-desert species.

The second half of this walk took us through the woods above the cliff. Matey was on his leash. It looked safe…

but we were close to the edge. There were fissures…

and it was a long ways down. Look closely and you can see the hikers we met, now at the base of the cliff while we are on top.

So even with an old campground with tight, uneven spaces, this was definitely a place worth visiting.

We are staying at the River Campground at Trail of Tears State Park and we are right along the Mississippi River. I took this photo from the back of our campsite. There is a chain link fence, then the railroad track, then the parking lot for the boat ramp and then the river. For the past three days the river has seemed busy, with tugs passing every few hours. The largest array of barges we’ve seen is five long and two wide, ten in all. I think that much larger ones are possible, but the river levels are very low, and I wonder if they have been unable to maneuver the larger ones. Today we had seen no river traffic at all, but as I sit here writing a 10 barge array is going upstream.

The trains have not stopped. There are about seven or eight trains a day that pass – close! I was sitting just at the back of the camper when this one came by. The park road to the boat ramp crosses the tracks less than 100 yards from the trailer and the trains blow their whistles for it. It makes for an interesting experience, if not a peaceful one.

Matey seems unfazed by the trains. He is much more interested in the many armadillos here. This is one we saw, I thought it was letting us get this close because it was right next to a culvert that it could hide in if we came closer.

But this one kept digging around paying no attention to Matey.

In fact, it came right up to him. It’s now hard to walk Matey around here, because he’s more interested in hunting armadillos than in walking. He can smell them all around.

Today we drove through the park to an overlook. You can see the sandbars in the low river.

We then drove about 20 miles further north to Tower Rock. This odd geological formation is a well known landmark on the Mississippi. The Lewis and Clark expedition camped here on their way up to the Missouri.

The rock appears to be a cut off extension of this bluff.

When the water is low enough you can walk out to the Tower Rock. We couldn’t, but there was a lot of exposed riverbed we did walk on.

Since we were out we drove on up to a disc golf course. This was in a city park and it was a nice one. The park was huge and we ended up walking almost two miles to play. It was a nice day, and this has been another nice stop, although fall is catching up to us.

We just spent three nights at the Highway K Campground.

It’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere, where Missouri Highway K crosses the Black River.

This is another Army Corps of Engineers campground, so the sites are paved and level.

There weren’t any trails, so Matey and I walked around the campgrounds. There were two loops open, but one had no electric and only one tent on the last morning we were there. This is the Black River near that loop. Three loops were closed and made for nice walking, but you had to drive over the bridge and a bit down Highway K to get there and there was no good place to park, as the entrance gate was closed. We did walk there once.

The nearest disc golf course was 25 miles away. It was decent, though I didn’t play well there.

This stop was very pretty and very quiet, but with no trails and worse, almost no cell service or internet, I was ready to move on after the three nights.

We’ve been in a lot of small towns in our travels, and Waynesville, MO, where we are now, is like many of them.

Its old downtown is trying to survive.

Much is made of its location along the old Route 66, which has become nostalgically popular.

Most of the businesses use the old route in their advertising.

The five arch, concrete bridge still carries traffic through downtown,

as it has since it was built in 1923.

This was a route through the Ozarks long before Route 66. This building was built in the early 1800’s and served as a stage coach stop for many years.

Before the stage coach stop, the area served as a stop for groups of eastern Indians on their long trek to Oklahoma after they were forced off their homelands in the southeast.

The Indian caravan stopped here because of the natural spring, which still gushes from under this wall…

at the base of this hillside.

It is not too impressive from the surface, but is a very popular cave dive in this area of the country.

The spring runs into Roubidoux Creek which is stocked with brown and rainbow trout. The spring and creek are another draw for this small town.

But what keeps this town alive is Camp Leonard Wood. The soldiers fill the rental houses in town as well as many new townhouses and apartments on the outskirts, and their children fill the large school.

To encourage tourists to stay a while, the city operates this campground.

It’s basic, but it does have full hook-ups. The setting is pretty,

and there are nice walks…

on both sides of the creek.

And at $20 a night or $100 a week it was enough to entice us to stay 9 days. Seemed like a good place for another little break.

We are now at Harry S. Truman State Park near Warsaw, Missouri. In the last forty days we have spent 38 at public campgrounds. These public lands are wonderful. This is the view of Truman Lake from the Bluff Ridge Trail in the park.

Matey and I enjoyed these views yesterday morning,

as we walked along the wooded trail. It was a bit hard to find in the fallen leaves, but we found it.

In the evening we walked the Western Wallflower Trail, and although the season is wrong for the flowers, we did see the lowering sun reflected on lake.

Not only was it another beautiful trail,

I also feel safe walking these trails with just Matey for company.

This morning we walked the 1000th Mile Trail and caught the early sun on the hillside.

The maples here made pops of color amid the mostly green oaks. This trail went through an area that’s being reclaimed from invasive red cedar (actually a juniper).

There were plenty of beautiful trees.

And a glimpse of another part of the lake.

Even when we stay at a commercial campground we spend most of our days on public land.

Both days we were here we played disc golf at a Corps of Engineers recreation area nearby.

It was a fun course,

in a pretty setting,

and we had it all to ourselves.

We wouldn’t be able to live like this and enjoy so much of the beauty of this nation (and Canada) if it weren’t for the public lands. So thank you taxpayers everywhere.

We are at Crowder State Park in northern Missouri.

We have a beautiful campsite originally set up for an intern, so it has full hook-ups and no neighbors.

This is our front lawn. There are no high mountains here, no grand rivers; many might find this area dully tame.

But I love these woods. There are oaks and ash and hickories and now maples.

The understory has dogwood and redbuds.

I love the morning sun filtered through broadleaves,

especially when the leaves are starting to turn.

There are rocky ridges here, but also plenty of dirt. Turns out I really like dirt with my rocks.

For the next three weekends in October this state park holds Haunted Hollow, which includes “haunted hayrack rides and spooky campsite decorating”. In driving around the park we’ve found the route for the hayrack ride, and it looks like it will be a good one.

At the northern edge of the park is the site of the old town of St. Deroin. There is not much left, a brick schoolhouse and a small building that was a broom making shop. It is the park road to this site that will be the route of the ride.

The one-way road winds down to the river through a ravine in these steep hills. Even at noon it was shaded and lonely looking.

Special effects have been added that make the picnic groves a bit forbidding.

From the townsite we took a walk up a steep and gnarly path…

to the old “half-breed” cemetery. Although not part of the route, it fit the mood.

The park road back out was even more confined, running up a narrow old cut.

No way to escape the ghouls…

waiting along the way.

Even the trees managed to look menacing. In an open wagon at dusk this route is bound to create some shivers.