Missouri - Day 9 - Elephant Rocks and rural Missouri

Onondaga Cave State Park, Leasburg
Friday, 9 April 2021

There was a beautiful peachy orange sunrise over the Mississippi this morning, and a hard-working tug pushing 5 heavily laden barges heading upriver.  We left the campground just after 7:00.

I stopped at the Visitor Center on the way out, hoping I'd find at least a brochure or something about the park or the Trail of Tears, but no such luck.  I did find some unusual wasp nests.

Is there such a thing as an Organ Pipe Wasp?

Actually, I looked it up and found that yes, there is an Organ Pipe Wasp, aka Organ Pipe Mud Dauber, aka Blue Devils (though they're considered very laid back and rarely sting anybody).  Who they sting are spiders, usually: they paralyze them, stick them (alive) in these tubes, then lay an egg on top and seal the cell.  I'm really sorry I know that.  What a ghastly way to die for the poor spider.

I also saw this sign about the Great River Road.

a closer view

and detail about Missouri

And then there's this view across the street:

early springtime in Missouri

today's route

On the road

About 15 or 20 miles from the park I came to the town of Jackson, pop. 13,758.  As I was driving into town I saw something that made me wonder if the town had been named for Andrew Jackson and, if so, has it ever occurred to anybody that honoring him like this practically on top of the Trail of Tears is problematic?  Then I came to this mural right by the courthouse.

So yeah, the town is named for the general/president.

I hadn't expected this town to be the county seat and, what with their one-way streets and rush hour traffic, I'd've had a hard time getting my own photo of the county courthouse.  I wish now that I had because this is all I could find online.

Cape Girardeau County Courthouse
in Jackson

It looked more impressive in person.  Although I saw a sign that made me think they've got a new courthouse across the street, but I sure didn't see anything else this impressive.

Trying to wend my way around the rush hour traffic and one-way streets, I passed a coffee shop near a traffic circle, and it was called: 

     Ground

        about

and a circle was drawn around those words, and it took me a minute to see that it was a pun.  It was still early.

I saw a billboard urging people to "talk to your kids to cut drug use in half."  It's another of Missouri's social service programs, apparently.  Here's the link.   https://talkaboutitmo.com

I passed the turn for Bollinger Mill State Historic Site.  It's a pre-Civil War mill for wheat and corn, plus a covered bridge.  I wish I had more time to make the side trip.

I spent a couple of hours on MO 72, driving through farming country.  Unlike the farms in the Boot Heel, though, these were on rolling green hills, with lots of trees.  Pockets of horses now and then.  Cows.

I passed something called Stitch It International, and after looking it up am surprised to discover that it seems to be a big deal.  It claims to be the only US distributor of SWF embroidery machines, as well as a seller of used embroidery machines.  I hadn't dreamed this might be such big business.

I don't know how their shipping trucks make it on these roads, though.  Those ridges they put on the lane lines for safety were real nuisances for me.  They'd put them exactly on the center line and exactly on the outside line - but these lanes were so narrow I had trouble staying exactly in the middle of them, so I spent way too much time running over those stupid ridges.

Around Junction City, pop. 327, I came upon an Amish horse and buggy.  They pulled over for the car in front of me and stayed over long after I'd passed, riding half on the shoulder and half on the grass.  I thought it must have been really hard on both the driver and the horse, and when they pulled off the shoulder I was afraid they'd tump over because the grass was a lot lower than the shoulder.

I crossed a bridge with a sign saying it was dedicated to "Private Henry Frizzell - Medal of Honor," and I thought he deserved my time in looking up why he received the Medal of Honor.  It's a remarkable story - he fought for the Union and received serious injuries - and here's the link.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Henry-F-Frizzell

I passed a scenic view pull-off that showed a nice view of Buford Mountain.  It didn't look like much more than an overgrown hill to me, so I didn't stop for long.  They should have had a sign telling ignorant people like me that at 1,740', Buford Mt. is just 32' shorter than the state's tallest point.

As I drove, I thought that what I was seeing was typical American countryside, and then realized how very different it was from the typical American countryside I saw in Kansas, for instance.  Here the land was hilly and green and lush.

I passed through the towns of Arcadia, pop. 608, and Ironton, pop. 1,460.  I'm sure there's a reason for both those names, but I didn't see anything that enlightened me.

Near Pilot Knob, pop. 746, and the site of a hard-fought Civil War battle, I looked intently to my left but never caught a glimpse of Taum Sauk Mountain, at 1,772' the state's highest point.  Maybe I just didn't know what to look for.

Just past Pilot Knob I came to Elephant Rocks State Park.

Elephant Rocks State Park

Named for the elephant-shaped giant granite boulders that stand end-to-end like circus elephants.  That's according to the state's pamphlet.  The park has a mile-long trail that runs around the area, but I was afraid to take the dogs on it in case there were other dogs farther along the trail that we might run into.  Instead, we just went to the start of the trail.

It's a Braille Trail, by the way, with a whole system set up to alert blind people when they've come to an informational sign, all of which are in both English and Braille.

the 1st sign of the series

It seems pretty clever, and I'll bet it works.

It's hard to show in photos how huge these rocks are, but if you look closely you can see a person in the top center of the photo near the top of the hill, climbing on the rocks that several signs told visitors not to climb.  But this couple came in a top-down Buick convertible wearing fancy clothes and looking like they think they're entitled to do as they please in the world.  Unpleasant snap judgement on my part, but I was irked with them for climbing on the rocks.

The actual elephant rocks are on the other side of the hill you can see in this photo (above), so we didn't get to see them.  There were still plenty of big boulders in the picnic area down below.

As a gauge to their size, look very carefully at the base of the black area of the boulders
in the center - there's a picnic table down near the base of the trees. 
These are big rocks.

There was a display describing the formation of the rocks and the history of mining the granite in this area.

I did the best I could to filter out the glare, and some photos were just unusable.

To bring it all down to a more cozy scale, when I was walking the dogs around the area I found a patch of pretty purple wildflowers.

these looked like dwarf hyacinths

I've noticed that March in Texas is the month for purple wildflowers.  I guess in Missouri it's April.

Back on the road

I turned onto MO 32 and began driving through the Mark Twain National Forest again - like I said a day or two ago, it's discontinuous.  Lots of cedars and lots of deciduous trees that haven't gotten their leaves back yet.

The road was mostly hills and curves and s-curves with few straight stretches, so I had a hard time finding places to let people pass.  Still, the road is used by many big trucks, so they make it work somehow.

This part of the state is in Iron County, with Ironton (back down the road) the county seat.  As you might guess, the name came from the abundant iron ore deposits around here.  

In the town of Viburnum, pop. 693 (as of 2010), I saw The Mine Supply Co., which was another clue.  But Viburnum is steadily losing population, with 825 residents in the 2000 census and an estimated 625 in 2019.  Neither the Wikipedia page nor the town's home page explains what drives the local economy, so I'm guessing not much these days.

A short distance down the road I passed the turn for the Dillard Mill State Historic Site.  This is one of MO's best-preserved gristmills.  Built in 1908, it's water-powered, has most of its original machinery and building, and is another place I'd like to stop when I have more time.

At Steelville (not named for its relation to iron but instead for the town's founder), pop. 1,622, I turned off the already fairly rural MO Hwy 19 I was on onto an even more rural MO Hwy 8, and from there onto MO Hwy E.  Google told me Hwy. E would become Cave Road, which would later become Hwy. H at the state park I was going to.  What Google didn't mention is that this was the back door to the state park, rather than the main entrance, and was a gravel road for the Cave Road section.  It was a hair-raising drive, with hills and curves to contend with while trying to keep traction on the gravel.

When I got to Onondaga Cave State Park, I found the park office was closed except on weekends, which didn't include Fridays, apparently.  But I got luckier this time than last night because I found the camp hosts right away and got them to check me in (because I still can't text or use a QR code) and give me a park map.

The park is named for what's billed as "one of the state's most spectacular" caves, a cave that's been designated a National Natural Landmark for its extensive geological decorations.  Thanks to the virus, it's currently closed.

The campground was completely sold out for the night, so instead of settling at our site - which was in the smack middle of the campground - I drove the dogs to the canoe/kayak boat launch, where we were able to walk around a couple of times without seeing any other dogs - or people.  That worked out fine.  It was much harder to walk them at bedtime because most people had set up camp and at least half of them had dogs, but I did the best I could.

My next door neighbor had a trailer - and a family - and I watched him spending an unusual amount of time lying on his back under the trailer.  When I took the dogs out I asked him what was up, and he said his slide was stuck.  He eventually got it out, but it made me thankful all over again that I hadn't decided to get an RV with a slide.

The Meramec River is one of Missouri's longest rivers, eventually dumping into the Mississippi.  Its headwaters are near Steelville and it runs right through the campground.  Right behind my campsite, in fact.  The park has signs all over the place warning of flash flooding.  They even give a handout to incoming campers titled "Flooding Issues At Onondaga Cave State Park" - 2 full pages of information.  The riverbed was completely dry when I got in, so I didn't worry much, but just after midnight the heavens opened up and it poured, off and on, the rest of the night.  By morning, what had been a dry rocky riverbed was a swollen river thundering through the area.  So I guess all those flash flood warnings are real.