Wednesday, 7 April 2021
This morning in Table Rock State Park, I saw both a nuthatch and a flicker. The type of flicker that's supposed to be here in Missouri is the yellow-shafted, which looks like this.
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| Yellow-shafted Flicker |
The weather forecast had been for thunder last night, and I was glad for Gracie's sake that we hadn't had any. But just as we got on the road, it started to rain, and we dealt with intermittent rain and some very low ceilings all day.
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| today's route |
You can see that Table Rock State Park is almost on the Arkansas border, and that my route today covered much of the southern part of the state. I'd originally intended to take that smaller road farther south, but my drive would be so many miles that I decided I'd be better off on a better road. Considering the kind of road I ended on, I'm really glad I didn't opt for something more rural.
On the road
It's only about 5 miles from last night's campsite to US 65, the main road north from Arkansas to Springfield and points north. But that 5-mile drive was fairly hair-raising - especially so early in the morning. It was carved out of those rocks I saw yesterday, and there were constant hills and s-curves. What I was driving on was bigger than hills but smaller than mountains. The view showed me rolling hills that were much taller than the actual rolling hills I've seen in other states.
It all made me wonder how old the Ozarks are, so I looked it up. I learned that they gradually emerged from the prehistoric waters covering the area 300-600 million years ago. (The websites say it was 600 million to 300 million years ago, but that only makes sense to me if they're giving it a B.C. date, which they weren't. They were just saying 600 million to 300 million years ago. So I'm doing it the way that makes sense to me.)
That timeline makes the Ozarks one of the oldest mountain ranges on Earth. By comparison, the Rockies are less than 100 million years old. And they sure show their ages in their appearances. The Ozarks probably were once as rough and peaked as the Rockies, but all those extra hundreds of millions of years have smoothed them down to produce the rolling hill appearance I'm seeing.
I passed through Branson (pop. 10,520 in 2010, though no sign told me so) just at rush hour and was thankful all the commuters were coming from the north. And there were a whole lot of them. Branson is best known - almost everywhere - as an entertainment capital, because here they offer many shows and various forms of entertainments. People I talked to in Joplin assumed I'd be wanting to go here - in fact, this is the only place in the entire state that the AAA guy recommended - but I'm just not a show-going type of person usually, so I was happy to be passing through it.
As I was driving, I became curious about just how religious a state Missouri is. I've been almost startled by the number of religious signs I've seen and the deeply fundamental nature of the religious principles they've promoted. So I looked it up and have learned that in 2014, the most recent comprehensive survey that Pew Research has done, Missouri ranked 15th among the states as being most religious. This was based on 60% of adults saying they were "highly religious." The 14 states that ranked higher than Missouri (with Alabama and Mississippi tied for #1 with 77%) were all states that were members of the Confederate States of America, with the exceptions of Oklahoma (ranked #8) which wasn't a state then, and West Virginia (ranked #7) which actually seceded from Virginia to remain in the Union. I'm sure that means something but I'm not sure what exactly. If you're curious, here's the link. https://www.pewresearch.org/how-religious-is-your-state
Another unusual highway sign caught my eye. This one was a yellow sign warning of an upcoming crossroads: "Watch for Entering Traffic →." Nothing unusual about that. But as I read it, yellow lights around its edges began flashing, and I wondered if a car had just come to that still-invisible crossroads. Sure enough, as I got over the hill, there was another flashing light over the intersection and a car waiting to enter the traffic. I was impressed with how effective this sign was in alerting me to a possible hazard - much more than the sign without the flashing lights usually does.
I saw a billboard that said:
Wear A Mask
Show Me You Care
When I looked up why Missouri is known as the Show Me state, I found that nobody knows for sure. I was also surprised to learn that it's not the official slogan or nickname or anything, despite being used on the state's license plates. Anyway, if you're curious about a couple of the possible origins, here's a link to the state's own version. https://www.sos.mo.gov/slogan
I saw a billboard saying that aquarium that the Bass Pro Shop in Springfield has was named America's Best Aquarium by USA Today.
I passed the turn for Wilson's Creek National Battlefield. As far as I can tell, Missouri is jam-packed with Civil War battle sites and related locations. As my travels go on, though, I'm increasingly seeing that war as one of the saddest, most misguided and futile wars the earth has seen, and I'm increasingly reluctant to spend time learning about it. However, this one being designated a national battlefield made me willing to look it up, even though I wasn't willing to visit it.
What I learned is that most Missourians wanted to remain neutral during the war. Unfortunately the governor was strongly pro-South and rival militias formed around the state. The Union assigned a fervent abolitionist to be in charge of the US Arsenal in St. Louis. Not content to just protect the arsenal, he set about conquering the militias in the area, then took his troops to the capital in Jefferson City and installed a pro-Union government. The pro-South governor spent the war in Marshall TX, operating from there as if he were still in charge of the state. From that position, he got Missouri membership in the CSA, official for the CSA though certainly never official in the state itself.
But before all that, the Union general had his troops in Springfield; the Confederate commander amassed troops nearby. The battle at Wilson's Creek, the first major battle fought west of the Mississippi, was a victory for the South, but strategically ended up being so costly that it ultimately won the state for the Union. One of those lost-the-battle-but-won-the-war things I guess.
I passed a sign advertising "Hardhat Gear - Working Man's Toy Store." So I had to look that up, but it turns out to be a store that sells all kinds of safety equipment: fall protection, hard hats, safety goggles, traffic signs - like that. I wouldn't have called them toys myself, but maybe so.
I saw a lot of signs encouraging folks to come visit Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in Bakersville, down the road. I thought about stopping off but couldn't find enough signs to get me there, and it turns out to be just as well since they're currently closed to visitors because of this virus. But they sell rare and heirloom seeds by mail, if you're interested.
I saw a "Trump/Pence" campaign sign, and this one had the "2020" altered to read "2024." That struck me as odd because of the fairly ugly things former Pres. Trump has been saying about his vice president since January, and because some of the pro-Trump mob in the Capitol building were chanting "Hang Mike Pence" and apparently meaning to do exactly that if they'd found him. Hard to envision either of those 2 agreeing to run again with the other.
In Fordland, pop. 800, I passed the Community Christian 25¢ Store. It's been a while since I last saw a 25¢ store and I was curious what this one sold.
Near the even smaller town of Diggins, pop. 299, I saw several signs like this one:
Usually they had an accompanying sign: "Next 7 Miles" or "Share The Road." Online I found that Missouri has the 7th largest Amish population of the states, and that the largest Amish settlement in Missouri is in the Diggins-Seymour area - Seymour being a few miles east of Diggins. There are about 1,500 Amish in this area. I didn't see any buggies here..
At Seymour (pop. 1,921 in 2010) I passed a discount shop called Se Mor Savings.
And then I came to Mansfield, where I didn't see a sign but the population in 2010 was 1,296. Mansfield's claim to fame is as the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House on the Prairie fame. I'm one of the few who never got around to reading her books and didn't even see the popular TV show about them. But I'd thought about visiting anyway for all my friends and family who did, except it turned out they wanted $15 for admission, and there's not many places I'll pay that much to visit.
But we stopped downtown at the square to take a rest break, and I saw a couple of nice monuments there.
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| Laura Ingalls Wilder monument |
The town square had another memorial, this one to someone I don't think I'd heard of: Carl Mays, a well-known baseball pitcher in the early 1900s.
Farther along the road I came to the town of Mountain Grove. The highway sign declaring the name of the town didn't include a population figure (4,789 in 2010) but did list the state athletic titles won by local schools. In fact, I noticed that about all the towns in Missouri - they didn't care whether I knew how big they were, but they cared a lot that I knew how many state titles their kids had won. All of them.
Mountain Grove is home to a Mennonite church, which I know because they volunteered for litter clean-up duty. Mountain Grove is also the location of something that claims it's the World's Largest Monument to the US Constitution. Somehow I doubt that claim, and I didn't go looking for it, but apparently I'd have found it in the parking lot of a gun store. It's 23' tall, 16' wide, and has the Preamble to the Constitution engraved in metal. Here's a link that has a photo and a description. https://www.roadsideamerica.com
By the way, I saw no mountains anywhere within sight of Mountain Grove.
Continuing down the road I came to Cabool, pop. 2,146, and was curious about that name, that sounds to me a lot like the town in Afghanistan. And in fact, that might be the basis for the name. Per Wikipedia, the British Army withdrew from Kabul in 1881. In 1882, one of the engineers who built the railroad running through Cabool thought the area looked like Kabul and gave it the British spelling of the name.
Alternatively, some locals claim there was once an Indian chief named Kabul who lived in the area and committed suicide with his sweetheart because their parents disapproved. Though it seems to me if he were really a chief, he'd have done what he pleased, despite the parents. Or he and his sweetie could have run away to somewhere else more accepting. I mean, double suicide seems a little extreme. Even Romeo and Juliet didn't intend that ending. But that's the story, and I guess they're sticking to it. At any rate, this is the only Cabool in the US.
North of Cabool is the town of Houston. They're both in Texas County. It just seems odd to me. Houston MO was founded in 1857 and named for Sam Houston; Houston TX was founded in 1836 and ditto. White settlement of Missouri happened much earlier than in Texas so this sequence seems odd to me. Texas County MO, by the way, was founded in 1843; Texas became an independent country in 1836 and joined the Union in 1846.
All too close to Mountain Grove, I came to the town of Mountain View, still without any mountains in view. And still with no useful information on its sign; the 2010 population was 2,719.
Along the road I saw a number of dead armadillos, I'm sorry to report.
At the town of Birch Tree, pop. 679, I saw a huge sign painted on the side of a barn:
Keep America Great
Trump
Reject Godless Tyranny
I have to admit I was startled about that godless tyranny bit and decided to look it up, in case I've been missing a slogan or something. I couldn't find that exactly, but I did find a lot of other odd websites, many ultra religious. One said mankind had turned from God and followed Satan when we started farming cattle and making musical instruments. Another talked about the Negative Aliens Archons group that wants to rule humans and earth with absolute authority. Like I said earlier, Missouri is a very religious state.
Several times I crossed the Eleven Point River, which seemed like an odd name, and I have no idea where it came from. Then I saw a sign saying it's been designated a National Scenic River, and 44 miles have been allowed to run free and undeveloped.
I passed the turn for the town of Low Wassie and wondered about the name. It was named Low Wossie in 1892, and then changed to Low Wassie in 1925. A "wassie" is dialect (apparently used no longer) for a rain wash or swamp, and near the village is a sink hole, likely the source of the old name. I'm guessing that dialect took "wassie" from the word "water" or more probably the German word "wasser." By the time of the Civil War, more than half of all resident immigrants in Missouri were from Germany.
Ozark National Scenic Riverways
This designation kept showing up on every map I looked at, and I finally got curious and stopped at the National Park Service office in Van Buren, which had 819 residents in 2010 (down from 845 in 2000). I learned that this area protects the 2 rivers that meet here in Van Buren - the Current River and the Jacks Fork River.
In 1964, Congress authorized this as the first national park to protect a river system. Included in this area are a number of caverns and several springs. The largest is Big Spring.
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| Big Spring |
Another ranger, by the way, told me Missouri didn't use to have armadillos, that they've been migrating north in recent years and that's partly the reason I've been seeing so many of them.
The most unprepossessing county courthouse I've ever seen, but then this little town is the largest in the county and is actually losing residents with each census.
Driving through Van Buren going back to the main road, I noticed signs for the Carter County Courthouse, so I followed them. I think this is it.
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| Carter County Courthouse in Van Buren |
A couple of times during today's drive we were passing through the Mark Twain National Forest, which covers several discontinuous areas of southern Missouri.
All day long, right from early this morning, I've been fighting a very strong crosswind. That gets so tiring after a while.
From Van Buren I still had a 45-mile drive, mostly on country roads, to get to tonight's campground. Lake Wappapello, and a nearby town of the same name, were named for an Indian chieftain. It sounds odd to newcomers like myself, but the folks around here seem very comfortable with the name.
I was a little surprised to find that there were only 3 of us in this campground - the camp host, another camper, and us. That made it a piece of cake to walk the dogs, though it was still raining off and on. The campground was right on the lake and was really pretty.
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