Missouri's Magnificent Mingo NWR

My early April travels along Highway 60 from Enid, OK to southeastern Missouri were fairly uneventful.  The gentle, rolling prairies and oil/gas fields of northeast Oklahoma gave way to southern Missouri's Ozark mountains-- tree-covered hills of blooming dogwood and rosebuds.

I arrived to Lake Wappapello State Park north of Poplar Bluff, MO the day before a spring storm was to pass through.  Nestled in the forest with a distant view of the lake, my rolling home had found safe shelter, and at only $12/night for an electric site, quite a bargain to extend my stay a week and explore the area.  Number One on the list would be a visit to Mingo National Wildlife Refuge.

MO Refuges & a Secret Highway

I was born in Missouri, and went to college there too.  Growing up, we had countless family trips to the “Show Me” state to visit my grandparents.  So, I’ve always felt like I’ve had a pretty good familiarity with the state.  But there was still a large swath of northern Missouri I’d never explored, so I took the opportunity with my end of April trip to quickly do so.

Passing through St. Joseph, MO with the highway towering over the Missouri river to the left and historic downtown to the right, I really wished I had allocated more time to explore this storied city, once the last bastion of civilization before pioneer wagon trains and Pony Express riders headed out into the great Wild West. 

But the focus of today’s trip was to check out 2 of Missouri’s National Wildlife Refuges – Squaw Creek and Swan Lake.  So, St. Joe had to settle for a few quick “windshield shots” and a promise that I’ll explore it more next time.

P = Pulled In and Parked

After leaving the Checotah Flying J, we had a warmer sunnier driving day through northeast Oklahoma and southwestern Missouri.  Incredibly, after taking over 7,000 photos this winter, I took zero on this day!  Missed a few really good shots too, like the full-sized bald eagle perched atop a small, wobbly tree right alongside the highway near Muskogee.  So strange to see one so close to the highway, on a much smaller tree than you usually see them in!

A few hours later, I was cruising along northeast of Tulsa and happened to look over at cattle grazing in a field.  There was something a bit odd within the herd, though, and as I got closer, I recognized them as three full-sized camels!  They were just grazing right alongside their bovine brothers as if it was just a perfectly normal thing to do!

But beyond those two momentary oddities, the day’s drive was fairly ho-hum.  The Interstate routes through Missouri and Illinois are exceedingly familiar, and as a result, the vistas just don’t inspire me the way other places do!

We had an uneventful, quiet night at the Wal-Mart parking lot near Ft. Leonard Wood, MO and continued on to Chicago the next day.  The only photos I took were out of sheer boredom in St. Louis as I sat in a long, slow-moving backup of trucks waiting to get onto the bridge across the Mississippi river!

I arrived back to my house after dark, pulled the Winnie (with Tracker still attached) right into the center of the driveway and parked.  After over 3 months and over 5,000 miles, we were back to our “non-mobile” home again.

We will stay parked here for the next few months as I work to get the house listed and sold this summer.  After that, the world is our oyster!

 

 

Mad Dash to Mexico

Even after preparing for this Mexico trip for nearly six months, I still found myself in a mad scramble to get the house buttoned up, rig packed, and get on the road.  Adding to the chaos, we managed to squeeze a house closing in there too (my stepsister, Holley, and her husband bought my mom’s house a couple days before I left).

Since the family had so much activity going on, we decided to move up our Thanksgiving/Christmas celebration to the weekend before Thanksgiving and had a wonderful evening together.  With that finished, it was now time to focus on the getting all the piles staged in my living and dining rooms moved out into the RV.  A bitter cold front had also just arrived further motivating me to hurry up and get out of town!

On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, Millie and I were finally on our way.  I was plenty nervous about this new rig (especially with visions of what surely were hundreds of pounds of excess cargo I had shoved into every nook and cranny!).  But the “T1Nnie Winnie” performed like a champ and had no problems at all.

I probably should have done a test hook-up of the new rig to the Tracker earlier, but had never gotten around to it.  So, on the day before Thanksgiving, when I finally hooked up the Tracker to the View, I now realized that this new View’s rear hitch was a couple inches lower than my previous View (so, now making my 6” drop hitch receiver a bit low and making the tow bar un-level).   Remembering that eTrailer.com was in the St. Louis area, and I could easily route that way on my trip to the Southwest, I called them to see about picking up a new drop hitch later that day.

Of course, I never manage to estimate my departure times correctly when leaving on a big trip, and this time was no different.  I now would not arrive to eTrailer until well past their closing time.  But, no worries!  A wonderful customer service girl named Rose, found a good hiding spot for my box outside, gave me the access code to open up their driveway security gate, and even gave me her home phone number to call that night if I had any problems.  Wow!  All that on the day before a holiday!  What a great group of folks (with great products and prices) at eTrailer.com !!!

Millie and I made our way across Missouri and Kansas as fast as we could, driving about 500 miles a day, and spending our nights at Flying J truck stops.  I had planned to stay overnight at a Wal-Mart in Kansas on Thanksgiving night, but then remembered that it would be Black Friday eve and that parking lot would be jammed with shoppers!  So, we found this nice Flying J in Emporia, KS to bed down for the night.  Millie enjoyed meeting her equine “neyhhh-bors"!



We routed through Kansas for two reasons—the diagonal route would be the shortest distance to Arizona from Chicago, but more importantly, we had a very special delivery to make at the family gravesites in Augusta, Kansas.  When we had scattered my mom’s ashes this past summer in Colorado, I had held back one small container to scatter at her parents graves.

My mom (as well as her mom) were consummate shoppers and considered Black Friday the highlight of their shopping year.  So, no better a day to reunite these 2 shop-a-holics!



We then continued our long day’s drive across Kansas.  It remained clear and sunny, but turned quite windy by afternoon.  No worries, though!  I just pulled into a nice city park in western Kansas and took a quick nap on our new RV’s nice permanent rear bed.  The sun shining through the windows made it a perfect warm and cozy mid-afternoon retreat!

Pushing on, we continued towards Liberal, Kansas and through the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas.  The drive was rather dull and uneventful, but I can report that I observed no liberals in Liberal, KS.  Nor did I see any hookers at the Hooker Inn in Hooker, Oklahoma!!!  But I did manage to snap a few pics of our new View’s shadow to break up the monotony!



By the time I reached the Texas panhandle, it was now after dark and the 2-lane Highway 54 felt a bit treacherous at Texas’ legal 75 mph speed limit.  I was glad to finally cross into New Mexico to return to a slower, safer speeds and spent the night at yet another Flying J in Tucumcari.

On Saturday, I hit the road early to meet up with fellow View-owner, Evelyn, at a casino on the outskirts of Albuquerque where she’d spent the night.  We caravanned along I-40 to make our way west to Arizona by nightfall.  Other than some dense fog and white-knuckle driving around Flagstaff, we finally arrived to one of my favorite BLM boondocking locations just outside of Cottonwood, AZ just after dark.   We awoke to this serene sunrise vista on Sunday morning:



Wishing we had more time to spend in Cottonwood, we regretfully had to leave on Sunday to continue pushing on to Yuma (as I had a dental appointment the next day). We decided to take the more-direct scenic route through Prescott and stopped for lunch in the little town of Yarnell, AZ (where the 19 firefighters lost their lives battling a wildfire last summer).  A touching memorial has been erected right next to the town’s restaurant.



Also, while in Yarnell, we happened to see another View (this one from Missouri), but we were never able to locate it’s drivers!



We finally arrived to Yuma by mid-afternoon and were greeted by warm, sunny temps in the mid-70’s.  We settled on a nice gravel plateau about a mile north of the Mexican border to boondock for the week with my friend, KamperBob, while getting our dental work done in Algodones, Mexico.  

Hopefully, all of my future cross-country drives will be at a much more leisurely pace!

Holiday Trip to KC

My mom wanted to attend the holiday luncheon of her high school classmates down in Kansas City, and asked if Millie and I would like to come along for the ride.  What better town to get into the holiday spirit?!!  So, of course, I said “yes.” 

Normally, I would have packed up the View & toad, but since this would only be a short trip (and it’s winter in the Midwest!), we decided to just take my mom’s car and stay in a dog-friendly hotel.

We only had one full “non-travel” day in KC, but we made the most of it.  After dropping Mom off to her reunion luncheon in Independence, I decided to check out the town’s Harry S. Truman tourist attractions.  But first, I wanted to find one of my grandfather’s old churches that he preached at in the 1970’s.

Happy to see that the First Christian Church is still looking good and apparently thriving!

Next, I saw a massive church steeple that I had to go check out.  This church was not around during my grandfather’s day.  It turned out to be the main temple & world headquarters for the Community of Christ denomination (the “reorganized” branch-off from the Mormon church).  Quite an impressive-looking place!

 

Finally, I made my way over to the Truman attractions.  I had wanted to visit his home (an NPS Historic Site), but there didn’t appear to be anyone home!  The gates looked locked and parking looked difficult, so I had to settle for a quick drive-by pic.  Sure looked like a pretty house, though!

 
Next, it was on to the Truman Presidential Library and Museum.  It sits impressively on a hilltop overlooking a large lawn:

The museum was on the small side but extremely interesting. Besides FDR’s tenure, I think Truman might have presided over the second-most eventful period of the 20th century—the end of WWII, post-war rebuilding, and start of the Korean War.

The museum started with the most famous thing that ever sat on his desk:

Next, was a full-sized replica of Truman’s Oval Office (circa 1945-52):

Quite some high-tech there too with his radio and television (I think he may have been the first president to have a television).

It’s amazing to think of the impact the year 1945 had on Truman’s life.  Previously, he had just been a modest senator from Missouri until being sworn in as Roosevelt’s VP at the start of 1945.  Within 100 days, he would assume the presidency after FDR’s death in April.



If that wasn’t hard enough to be thrown into the presidency that quickly, consider that he also had World War 2 raging on multiple continents, and massive shortages and sacrifice occurring domestically.

Within his first 4 months in office, Truman presided over the end of WW2 in Europe, and had to make the difficult decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan (which led to Japan’s surrender a few days later in August).

In the next few years, he focused on things like the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, addressing housing shortages and inflation at home in the booming post-war economy, and navigating the tumultuous early days of the “Cold War” with Russia. 

Still, by the Presidential elections in the Fall of 1948, the country was closely divided in it’s opinion of this unlikely president.  Remember this famous headline?

The lobby of the museum is dominated by a massive floor-to-ceiling mural from Kansas City’s other famous son, painter Thomas Hart Benton. 

My photo does not do justice to how vivid the colors are in this very lively depiction of the early pioneers (who’s journeys on the famous trails across the Plains such as the Oregon Trail and the Sante Fe Trail all began in the Independence area).  The mural is absolutely stunning!

After picking mom up and a quick rest back at the hotel, we headed down to Country Club Plaza to enjoy the lights and grab some dinner.

My mom, brother and I were all born in Kansas City and there is no prettier place to get into the Christmas spirit than visiting Country Club Plaza during the holidays. While the biggest hoopla (and biggest crowds) happen on Thanksgiving night when all of the plaza lights are first turned on in unison, truly any evening during December will provide a visit full of Christmas magic.

On our drive back home to Chicago the next day, we stopped for dinner in the Quad Cities to see my friend Judi’s Sportsmobile van that she had just bought earlier in the week.

After realizing that trailer camping in her T@B was becoming too difficult for her to do on her own, she reluctantly announced this past summer that her camping days were likely over for good and that she’d no longer be able to attend our annual rallies.  

She used to have VW camper vans in the 1970s and would often fantasize about getting another van someday.  Perhaps even using it as her “daily driver”.  But any used van she might happen to see would either be too expensive, too old, too “un-stealth”, or too run down to seriously consider.  That is, until this very-pampered, very-stealthy Dodge Sportsmobile van came along!  So thrilled that Judi will be able to camp again!!!  What a great Christmas gift!

Magical Ozarks– A Springtime Oasis!

Spring is my favorite season.  After 4 months in the Southwest with it’s subtle color variations, I was really longing for a good old Midwest “knock your socks off” panorama of vibrant green as far as the eye could see!   So I planned to stop a few days in the Ozarks of Arkansas and Missouri during my trip back to Chicago where I’d be sure to get my spring green fix!

I started seeing a few vistas of green in Oklahoma, and by the time I crossed the Arkansas border near Fort Smith, there was no mistaking that I was now it brilliant green Ozark country!  I decided to spend the night, appropriately, in the town of Ozark, AR just a few miles off of I-40 along the Arkansas river.

I stayed at a nice Army COE campground called Aux Arc Park (using the classier French spelling of Ozark) and got a spot right along the river
 
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The next day I wanted to drive north to the Buffalo River area around Harrison and Jasper.  I took Scenic Route 21 from Clarksville and it was a delightfully rolling and twisting drive up and down the Ozark mountains and past fields of crimson clover and yellow canola

I had been thinking about staying a few days around Harrison to do a paddling trip along the Buffalo, but I wasn’t finding the right blend of scenic campground with hookups that I was looking for (and I also found out the Buffalo water levels were quite low so I’d not be able to paddle the section I was most interested in).

So…on to Plan B.  I continued on towards the Ozark National Scenic Riverways park in southeast Missouri stopping first at a large, quiet Wal-Mart parking lot for the night in White Plains, MO to stock up on supplies.

I don’t know why driving into the small town of Eminence, MO always reminds me of the song “Dueling Banjos” from the movie Deliverance, but there are more than a few old rundown houses in town that have an assortment of old recliners, appliances, and even ATVs parked on the front porch!  Combined with spotty to non-existent cell phone, TV or radio reception, and a city slicker could certainly feel a bit apprehensive in this part of hillbilly country.

But, truth be told, the people are honest and friendly, and it’s a wonderful get-away from the hectic pace of the modern world.  There are so few places in the eastern half of the U.S. where you can do that!

The park protects two natural spring-fed rivers—the Current and the Jacks Fork.  Both are crystal clear and nearly completely devoid of any mud or sediment.  Millie tested out both rivers and gave them her highest “Four Paws” seal of approval!

The afternoon sun on the still Jacks Fork river also made for some terrific mirror reflections:

I badly wanted to paddle one of these rivers, but I also really wanted to photograph the natural springs that feed them and didn’t have time to do both.  So, the springs won out this time (I know I’ll be back!)

I started my explorations at the southern end of the park near the down of Van Buren, MO to see Big Spring.  It’s adjacent to a large NPS campground and picnic area which must be quite busy in the summer.  Thankfully, on this quiet spring weekday, I had the place virtually all to myself!  What an idyllic spot to enjoy the afternoon!

I took a different route back home towards camp so that I could check out Blue Spring, supposedly the deepest of all the Ozark springs.  It, indeed, was a brilliant blue and looked pretty darn deep!

The photo below initially appears to be a mirror reflection of the trees, but click it to look a bit closer at the water—it’s the rocky cliff beneath the surface heading down into the spring!



The spring poured out onto a brief stretch of rapids that I followed alongside via a short path that led to a nice view of the Current river where the spring water ended up.

Back at the Alley Spring campground, I noticed the tell-tail sign that a change of weather would be coming within 12 hours—altocumulus clouds in the sky!

Sure enough, the next morning we awoke to rain and significantly colder weather.  As soon as the rain let up a little bit, I hopped in the Tracker to head over to nearby Alley Spring. 

I was first enchanted by this place in the Fall of 2010.  As wonderful as it was to photograph in Autumn, I was intrigued by what it might look like in the Spring.  I now have to say that I like it even better at this time of year!  See if you agree--  .

As pretty as the little creek and waterfall were, the vibrant aqua spring itself is the main attraction here.  Of course, the rains resumed just as I started photographing it, but no worries!  I had my camera on a tripod and just slowed my exposures down enough to smooth out the water surface of the steady raindrops.  The rain also ensured that I could have this special “Heaven on Earth” place all to myself for the morning.  What a delicious oasis to return to after so many months in the desert!

We left camp the next day to drive back home to Chicago.  I had hoped to photograph the final spring, Round Spring, on the north end of the park, but the park service had it closed off to visitors for the weekend.  Guess I’ll have something new to explore the next time!