Sunday (Jul 31)
My green hammock blends in with the forest so well that I thought it was gone for five minutes or so, thinking evil thoughts about my neighbors. Dumbass me.
After a pleasant morning of trip planning, I batten down the van and leave my spacious double site. Down the hill to the river and the county road, then back up the even bigger hill to the highway where I am able to get phone reception. Yelp alleges a nice restaurant in the beautifully named town of Arcadia, 14 miles away with wifi! It’s 1-ish on Sunday and I’m in no hurry, so I get psyched for a nice Sunday dinner.
Success! The institution is a former Ursiline Academy and the restaurant is the former dining hall. The Church closed down the Academy years ago and thereafter eventually sold the property (they do that?). It was eventually bought by some Mormons (?!) who are making a go of it with weddings and catering and this restaurant. The wifi was broken, but everything else was just peachy. Big ole breakfast buffet with a made to order 3 egg omelette and all the country things I’ve come to expect since Indiana. I dressed up with one of my good shirts!
Today is not a long drive by cross country standards, but the narrow, no-shoulder curves tire me out. I stopped and chilled and even napped for a little while at a rest stop. I was tired enough to collapse in a new-to-me lounging position that had eluded me for my first six years with the van. Something new!
WHUFU page for: Big Spring Campground
Used to be a state park, but they gave it to the Feds for some reason. [After my experience the next few days with state parks, I can see it. The layout is quite similar to Bennett Springs and Roaring River.]
There's a loop with hookups and a small loop without, which for some reason was where everybody was.
I was the only person in the huge expanse of the main loop. My site had pretty good shade in the morning, most didn't.
Showers are a short drive down the road, but that's way better than no showers.
tonight:
Used to be a state park, but they gave it to the Feds for some reason. [After my experience the next few days with state parks, I can see it. The layout is quite similar to Bennett Springs and Roaring River.]
There's a loop with hookups and a small loop without, which for some reason was where everybody was.
I was the only person in the huge expanse of the main loop. My site had pretty good shade in the morning, most didn't.
Showers are a short drive down the road, but that's way better than no showers.
Big Springs has a very big campground. There are also two side loops. One has hook-ups so that’s where the big boys are. The other has no hook-ups, and for some reason all the tent-ers and pickup campers are packed there. So there is a huge, wide-open camping area with nobody in it!
Clearly that huge empty place is the place for ole contrarian me! It was very pleasant. Even though it’s close to sunset I get a burr up my butt to walk to the springs, so I do. This would have been the perfect place to unfold the bike, but I don’t.
What I do instead is take a four-ish mile walk to the Spring and back. The walk there is in twilight. I view the Spring in near dark, and the walk back is in darkness. This is the no-moon part of the cycle so the dark is pretty dark. I love picking out my path in the dark so I quite enjoyed it!
Monday
I tried to find the showers on foot in the dark last night and failed. After my humid four mile hike last night a shower is pretty important this morning, so I stop there on the way out of the campground.
Last night when I turned off US 60 for the Spring I noticed a restaurant sign saying “BBQ and wifi”. That stuck with me, so I made a beeline for there after enjoying the Spring. Yelp showed no prospects for a decent breakfast, so BBQ is close enough!
Lunch at the Stray Dog was just fine. Their wifi worked and their salad bar was pretty good, so I am counting that a big WIN. Amazing how the wifi lust builds up after two days without.
I backtracked across the river into Van Buren in a determined quest for BEER … because I am weird. I still have … 22 Sierra Nevada beers of various kinds squirreled away in storage and my fridge, but I can see the end of them, which triggers a whole set of neurotic behaviors involving my issues about scarcity and safety. To cut to the chase I bought a six pack of Michelob which will be my secnd beers of the evening going forward. Also a couple of pre-made sandos and some chicken and potato salad because I finally ran through my leftovers and am back to my regular routine.
Then a short drive to tonight’s campground, just like last night’s campground.
The oak-lined roads around here are very scenic and well-paved (unlike Indiana and Kentucky), but still a little exhausting to drive, because the lack of shoulders means there is no margin for error. Think back to any time when you’re coming around a curve and meet a truck that is a little too far into your lane,you swerve onto the shoulder just to be safe. Well around here, you just have to gut it out or have a bit of a problem, because where the shoulder should be is a three-inch dropoff (the thickness of the asphalt) then grass then trees. That’s all ya got to work with. Maps and directions and phone reception are pretty crappy around here so I’ve missed more than my usual share of turns, and finding a place to turn around is pretty difficult.
WHUFU page for: Alley Spring Campground
Another very nice, well maintained campground built around another gorgeous freshwater spring. The one has Alley Mill, a grist mill driven by the outflow of Alley Spring - now a park info center.
The mill is a short walk from the campground. If you hunt around for it there is swimming access to the river (swinning in the spring outflow, that's a no no in all these parks).
tonight:
Another very nice, well maintained campground built around another gorgeous freshwater spring. The one has Alley Mill, a grist mill driven by the outflow of Alley Spring - now a park info center.
The mill is a short walk from the campground. If you hunt around for it there is swimming access to the river (swinning in the spring outflow, that's a no no in all these parks).
This campground is even huger than Big Springs. I cruised four very large loops and settled on a spot with privacy, an open feeling, and shade in the morning. Two out of three ain’t bad.
I marked my spot, drove back to pay, then drove directly to the actual spring, which is much closer than the actual spring was last night. Shoulda drove last night and walked tonight, but who knew?
Same idea as last night, whole different implementation. The outflow of the spring is not nearly as dramatic, just a big pool. But this one has a mill building. They drove a grist mill off the output of Alley Spring.
Back to my site, hung out till almost dark, when I suddenly got energetic, as I so often do at sunset. I put on my swimming trunks and my hiking boots and headed off for a trail along the river that the campground map sort of implied exists.
I did find the trail, and on the trail I found a secluded spot to slip into the river and float around for a while. I had the foresight to bring my soap and shampoo, so I stopped at the camp showers and rinsed off the river mud before returning home for the evening. All in all a great success!
Tuesday
I miscalculated the morning sun trajectory by a few degrees. In my defense it was overcast last night so I couldn’t see where the sun set. I had to wake up enough to move the van over a site to a shady spot. Nice morning after that, but it’s always hard to get back to sleep after driving :)
Checkout time is noon here for some reason. so I left a little earlier than usual. Salem MO appears to be as big as it’s gonna get for me today, so I aim for there. I had a very tasty lunch – hamburger stroganoff at Annie’s Diner in Salem. No wifi, so I hopped over to the Salem Public Library., which overall was a FAIL I had to go through some registration nonsense left over from the 90’s, then the wifi was too crappy to use. Big sigh, then one more stop for a hot fudge sundae at good ole reliable, dependable McD’s to get my podcasts downloaded.
WHUFU page for: Lane Spring Campground
Third spring in a row!
The campsites are nice, but the place is very remote and I didn't feel good about my neighbors, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I might've. There looked like very nice sites next to the river at the end of the loop (next to the sketchy people)
tonight:
Third spring in a row!
The campsites are nice, but the place is very remote and I didn't feel good about my neighbors, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I might've. There looked like very nice sites next to the river at the end of the loop (next to the sketchy people)
Of all the hot and humid evenings I have endured so far, this is the hottest and humidest. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any hotter and humider, it does..
I have phone bars, but I can’t really use the phone because my fingers are too sweaty to work the touch screen – really.
Time for a sunset walk back to the spring. Lane Spring is the most modest of the springs I have visited. Maybe 25′ across and only a little stream for the outflow, not a full-on river like the last two. But it is also the most deserted! I go back for my trunks (if I get busted I don’t want to get busted in my underwear :) and engage my fantasy of hopping into one of these beautiful pools. My pool fantasy did not include the fact that the water would be fucking cold I could barely get in! So no leisurely backstrokes over the pure white sands, I just sat and splashed water on myself and hopped out. It was pretty much like going in the cold plunge at your favorite spa, a thing I rarely do.
Now I know why that thick, heavy mist comes up every night on just these spring outflow streams and not the streams they merge with. The water is so cold coming out of the ground and the dew point is so close to the ambient temperature that it makes fog.
It rained for most of the night. The pitter-patter woke me up around midnight, and I rushed outside to gather up everything I didn’t want to get wet. It was hard to get back to sleep after all the hubbub; I stayed awake til dawn. It’s actually cool and pleasant right now, and my phone gets reception, so I’m enjoying it!