Bats! I'm busy.

I'm too busy to post anything detailed today. I have to work my regular job and chip away on my novel.

In the meantime, here's an image I'd meant to post earlier. We encountered this at Welch Spring. There was a small "closed" sign in the spring itself. Seemed strange until I realized that you could dive into the water, go through the spring outlet and emerge into an extensive cave system just beyond.

The Park Service does not want you to do this. For the following reason:

Bats!

Lower Current

Our first day of floating and exploring the Current River was on the lower section of the river. While quite pretty, this section is not as scenic as the upper Current. In addition, the day we went was, we later learned, the most crowded the river had been all summer. Our outfitter told us a few days later that they had ferried 3,000 people to put-ins along the river that day. Trying to negotiate between the masses of tubers and canoe/kayak enthusiasts was sometimes problematic. Add to this the fact that boats with motors up to 40hp are allowed on the river, and there is the recipe for some unpleasantness.

However, the water was cool and clear and we still had a great time as we negotiated our way downriver. One nice thing about the Current is that it's spring-fed, so the level of the river stays fairly constant when compared to other such tributaries. Thus, it's almost always navigable along its entire length. If you're not paying attention, you might hit a shoal or barely concealed gravel bar that requires you to get out to find deeper water, but by and large you can float unimpeded the entire way.

Loading up and heading out was something of a madhouse. Believe me...this was only a small portion of the crowd that we encountered along the way. Fortunately, the numbers dwindled the farther we went, since there were various pickup spots along the way, and some people traveled shorter distances than we did.

There is a stretch of the Current that is in private hands and is not officially part of the National Park. On this section there are houses, commercial camps, and other such things. This fellow was using his lot to park a hot dog stand. He was doing quite the business.

Again, this was on a stretch of privately-owned riverbank. This absolutely cool house was perched on the precipice of a cliff face with staircase down to a private dock (down on the lower right). I do believe that the water here was deep enough to allow for jumping from the deck into the river.

Not long before our takeout at Big Spring Campground. This is the remains of an old railroad trestle that once crossed the Current River. Today it's a good landmark to let you know that the canoe ramp is nearby.

Heading back to our travel trailer in the evening after our canoe trip, the deer were grazing in the grass beside the campground.

Dr. Diehl's Folly

One very interesting spot that we hit was while we were on our favorite part of the Current River (upper section). We both wanted to see the ruins of the old Welch Hospital, a sanitarium built for TB sufferers. The hospital ended up being a financial disaster for its owner and it closed for good in 1945, 32 years after its construction.

When we got to the put-in spot we had a number of canoes to choose from. As we'd had a good experience with an aluminum canoe on our first float on the Current, we picked one of those. It turned out to be a moderately bad choice. After we'd left the launch area and were about a half-mile down the river I noticed that the canoe was taking on water. I quickly saw that the bottom had a very small puncture that was allowing water to come in. We had to stop a couple of times on the float to dump the water out. The leak wasn't severe, but it was a minor pain to have to clear out the water.

We stopped at this gravel bar to have lunch, go swimming, and to empty the water we had taken on. This was a really nice place to stop. We watched the fish, took a fair amount of time to swim in the clear water, and generally just took it easy and soaked up some sun.

After a couple of hours we came to Welch Spring, which produces over 105 million gallons of water a day, making it a first magnitude spring. There's an extensive cave system just inside the spring opening, although it's closed to anyone who doesn't have a research permit to explore it.

Built right on the shore of the spring run is the old Welch Hospital. I'm always amused at the impermanence of Mankind's buildings. There were several cabins adjacent to the hospital and I couldn't find any trace of them at all. Anything that was wood that was associated with the old sanitarium is long since gone. All that remains are the stone walls and the poured concrete.

Dr. Diehl went to a lot of expense and trouble to construct this place. The walls still seem to be in relatively good shape, although it's only a matter of a few more decades before the trees start to topple them over.

This plaque has a representation of what the hospital looked like when it was still intact.

I climbed up on a rocky bluff to take this photo of the building. You can just see Carole on the far right behind a small tree.

This was the staircase leading up to what was once the main door. You wonder about the patients who made the long journey to this place to seek treatment for their tuberculosis. I tried to imagine them walking up these stairs to what they hoped would be relief from suffering.

There is the constant sound of rushing water as the spring flow makes its brief way downslope to the Current River. Beyond the spring run, the Current River becomes even more clear than above, and noticeably colder.

When we paddled past this spot, this was our last view of Welch Spring as we moved on down the Current River.

Some Critters

A highlight of our camping trips is always the wildlife that we encounter. Sometimes we're really surprised, such as the bears we saw on trips to West Virginia and western North Carolina. Generally, though, we see a lot of the same animals from trip to trip, since we spend all of our time on the east coast.

Here, then are a few photos of our wild friends whom we encountered at various points along our vacation.

We rarely go anywhere without seeing white-tailed deer. This time, though, we were lucky enough to see a lot of fawns with spots still present.

The common Great blue heron. It's rare that I don't encounter one of these. One ranger in Florida pointed out to me that the Great blue is a top predator, chowing down on some really unexpected prey. I'd always thought of them as just eaters of fish, but he told me that he'd seen them eat large turtles, snakes, rats, etc.

This baby muskrat was in Mammoth Spring just across the Missouri border in Arkansas. He seemed hardly aware of us as he sat there eating green bits of vegetation. He seemed terribly content.

A ground hog at Big Spring. We saw these several times, but not every day.

We also saw the signs of other animals that we never actually saw alive. Such as the skunk paw prints all over our picnic table one morning. In addition, we saw a lot of road kill. The most common victims were coyotes (we saw about six road-killed coyotes), armadillos (I hadn't known that Missouri had them, much less in large numbers), and skunks. We even saw a Great horned owl that had been struck and killed by a car.

He didn't seem to care how close we got.

Greer Springs

Hike to Greer Springs

The most beautiful spring that we visited in Missouri was one called Greer Springs. It lies at the bottom of a shallow gorge and is reached by a one-mile trail. The trail was pretty easy with only one steep section just before reaching the spring. And it passes through some classic Ozark oak/pine forest that is relatively mature with some nice trees.

The day we went it was very quiet and there were no other people on the trail, nor at the springs while we were there.

Down in the grotto at the head of the gorge the spring emerges full force: millions of gallons of clear, cold, fresh water. (Click to embiggen.)

As with most of the Ozarks springs we saw, this one generates millions of gallons of cold, pure, fresh water per hour. The spring itself emerges in a torrent from a cave in a grotto and the combination of color and sound and low temperature made for a unique experience. This was easily the most beautiful and sensational of the springs we saw in Missouri.

The hike down got pretty warm, so Carole cooled off there in the rapids near the mouth of the spring.