Missouri, Part 3 - Hiking the Dragon [240417-23] (2024)

The shape of the Lake of the Ozarks has earned it the nickname "the Missouri Dragon"; looking at an aerial or map view can show you why. Our week stay here marked a change in the pace of our trip so far: having gotten passed the pre-scheduled activities in Lampasas and St. Louis, the long hectic days spent driving in the car gave way to more relaxing days spent out "doing other things".

Our apps had been warning us that we were heading into bad weather, and when we checked in to the campsite on Wednesday evening they warned us that "severe weather" was forecast for Thursday, with thunderstorms that could drop 1.5-2 inches of rain - so we decided to make Thursday an "errand day" instead of a "hiking day".

The nearby city of Osage Beach had an Aldi grocery store, which we had heard about before but never visited since there are none in Northern CA. Rumored to be "sort of like Trader Joe's" from a selection and packaging standpoint, but cheaper than even Walmart, it definitely sounded like a place worth visiting.

Trying to get a grocery cart outside confused us for a moment, as they all seemed to be locked together for some unknown reason. The sign on the far wall wasn't particularly helpful either.

We eventually found another one that said "Insert quarter to unlock cart. Return cart to get quarter back" which was a little more helpful. Kind of ingenious actually. Pushing a quarter into the slot releases the locked chain in the rear, locking the quarter in place, and you can remove the cart. When you're done you put the cart back, reinsert the chain from the cart previously at the head, and it releases your quarter. It saves them from having to pay employees to retrieve carts from the parking lot (indeed, there are no cart return corrals in the parking lot at all) - with the only downside being that all Aldi shoppers have to know to bring a quarter with them if they want to use a shopping cart.

This particular Aldi was a good size, with a little of every grocery department you could want selling a mix of name and house brand goods.

We were amused that we came all the way to Missouri to buy lettuce "fresh from Salinas, CA"

The prices were pretty good, with most being on par with Walmart's and some being substantially lower. Tom even tried one of the Aldi "cult favorites" - a Guacamole Ranch dressing - which he absolutely loves (both as a dressing and sandwich spread). Unfortunately, like Trader Joe's they don't stock everything, so we still had to stop at Walmart afterwards to pick up a few items.

We decided to spend the rest of the day at the Osage Beach Public Library, to make use of the free wifi and work on the "Missouri Part 1" blog post there. The rain still hadn't arrived yet and it was 82 degrees and humid when we arrived, so we went inside to avail ourselves of the air conditioning as well. Around 3 pm, occasional rain showers starting passing through - but nothing approaching the severe thundershowers that had been predicted. We stayed until closing time at 6 pm, and then moved to the parking lot; the temperatures had dropped 20 degrees by then and it was quite chilly outside, but warm in the T42. Since the wifi reached out into the parking lot sufficiently, we stayed there and continued working through dinner (it's nice carrying around your kitchen with you wherever you go) finally finishing and heading back to camp after 10 pm. The sleep sack was flipped back over into "winter" mode again that night.

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Friday morning was partly sunny. The plan for the day was to hike a couple of the trails in our section of the Park, starting with the Lakeview Bend Trail - a 1.5 mile loop trail that circles a section of the campground. The path has some gentle ups and downs through forested areas, with lake views from about 1/3 of the path. The blue tag on the tree on the right in the photo below shows how most of the trails in the Missouri state parks seem to be marked. In what we can only guess is some sort of cost saving move, there is very little actual signage on the trails themselves. Instead, the trails on the paper trail maps are color coded - as are the signs at the start of the trailhead, if you can find them. Once on the trail, instead of signs there are plastic squares/rectangles (about the size of a Post-It note) nailed to a tree every ~100 yards or so letting you know where the official trail is; when trails overlap, both squares are nailed. A fine system in theory, but what we found is that on some of the loop trails care wasn't taken to make sure that the squares would always be visible regardless of the direction of travel - so you had to keep looking backwards if you hadn't seen a square in a while, to make sure there wasn't one that was just on the wrong side of the tree. Wind and/or critters seem to be doing a fair amount of damage to the squares as well, so you had to look for partial plastic - or in a number of cases, an empty nail in the side of the tree(s).

We don't usually take flower photos, but these pretty ones were scattered around. Our Seek app identified them as being Blue Phlox (aka Wild Sweet William).

And these were identified as being Columbines (pretty from the side, but even prettier when you look from below so you can see their petals).

We declared this bluff "more photographically interesting than Eagle Bluffs" 😜.

We eventually found a spur that gave shore access to the lake.

Later in the day, we drove a little ways to a parking lot close to the Hidden Springs Trail trailhead. Continuing the day's theme of "things we normally don't take photos of": the parking lot had the cutest little bathroom!

Even the tree stump in the parking lot seemed to love it.

The Hidden Springs Trail is a 2.5 mile loop trail through the native woodlands that grow on the bluff above the lake.

We crossed paths with a solitary deer that was out for a mid-day stroll, but she ran off as we approached. The many flowering dogwood trees were in bloom, though.

One the way back to the campsite we visited the small little camp store (an eclectic mix of souvenirs and overpriced food and camping supplies), and then showered and cooked and ate outside from our Aldi "finds" the day before.

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On Saturday we had one of our best days in the area: our day trip to the nearby Ha Ha Tonka State Park. A quick stop at the Visitor Center netted us maps that showed that the park had a number of short-ish sounding trails, but since Ha Ha Tonka was far from flat the distances were deceiving.

Our first stop was at the Castle Trail. Because all castles have to be built on top of hills, the trail went up from the parking lot, with the first item of interest being the ruins of the Carriage House.

Nearby, this interpretive sign tells the history of the Castle (and many of the other structures built in the area).

Continuing to the top of the hill brings you to the remains of the Castle itself. Even with just the remaining stone walls, it's quite an impressive looking structure.

We moved the T42 further up the road to the confluence of multiple trailheads. The first we ventured out on was the Devil's Kitchen Trail: a 1.4 mile loop that starts by climbing up into a wooded area.

You eventually reach the Devil's Promenade: a concave bluff.

The trail gets a little dicey at that point, with some narrow rocks you have to scrabble between, and some high ledges with drop-offs. A short while later, though, you arrive at Devil's Kitchen: a sinkhole with a shelter cave in the bottom. When we arrived, there was already a large group in the cave cooking ramen over camp stoves.

A chimney in the back lets you look up out the top of the sinkhole.

The trail continues around to the top of the sinkhole.

The trail looks mostly the same throughout, except for one small section that momentarily opens up into a glade.

At the overlap of multiple trails is the Natural Bridge.

There are trails that take you below/through the bridge as well as over the top, but TBH you could easily walk over the top of the bridge without even realizing it.

We also took a slight detour out on the Lake Trail far enough to see the Water Tower.

Periodically along some of the paths are benches to rest on, each with their own little sponsorship plaques. This one by the Water Tower caught Christine's eye.

You almost got a better view of the Water Tower from the end of the parking lot (although it was much farther away at that point):

After lunch, we embarked on the Spring Trail: a 1.4 mile loop from which the 0.5 mile Island Trail (loop) branches off on the far side. Both distances sound harmless, but the parking lot is up on a hill and the spring is at lake level, so a short ways down the trail you come upon a staircase containing 316 wooden steps you get to go down. Along the way there's supposed to be a sinkhole, but the one and only viewing platform along the way looked out through a heavily wooded area to what might have had a canyon like thing beyond it - but some judicious pruning (or an interpretive sign) would have been helpful if that really had been it. Eventually, we reached the bottom of the stairs.

And the Spring.

At the junction with the Island Trail, we crossed over to do the loop there.

As with the original Spring Trail, the 0.5 mile length was deceptive since the trail went up and over the island's hill to get to Balanced Rock. Finding Balanced Rock ended up being something of a challenge, since we took the path marked by the sign and continued to climb upward - until we reached the top of the hill where we found other confused folks trying to figure out what they were supposed to be looking at as well. Thankfully we had cell service, so we were able to do an image search for "Balanced Rock Missouri" and see pictures - which showed that there were taller things around Balanced Rock than the rock itself, so the top of the hill was definitely the wrong place to be. Looking down and around, we spotted the trail we needed to be on, and figured out how to get to it (eventually finding one of those colored squares hidden away on a tree 🤦).

Continuing on to the other side of the island, the trail went by Island Cave, which unfortunately is accessible by permit only.

The trail also went by some rapids at the mouth of the river, that had been generating the enticing waterfall-like sounds that we had been hearing from various parts of the Park throughout the day.

While the rest of the loop back didn't have another 316 steps, we did have to regain the elevation lost to get back to the trailhead - which helped make up for all the days we had spent on our butts driving in the van.

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On Sunday, we traveled a short distance out to a disconnected portion of Lake of the Ozarks SP. We found a nice parking spot at the Rocky Top Trail trailhead where the T42 could look out over the lake while we hiked.

Rocky Top Trail is a 2 mile double-loop that contains "one of the largest glades in the park".

Most of the trail was tree covered, though, which was more to our liking.

Eventually the path became true to its name and went across the dolomite cliffs overlooking the lake.

After lunch we moved the T42 to a parking lot at one end of the Shady Ridge Trail, which ended up being a mistake because 1) we think we actually could've just walked along the shoreline and eventually ended up in the same spot, and 2) the large parking lot was jam packed with cars, trucks, and empty boat trailers with some sort event going on. It turns out this was the weekend of the Big Bass Bash, and tons of folks had come out to compete (in case you're interested, the top of the leaderboard that afternoon was someone with a 7.63 lb bass). The constant drone of motorboats vying for the best fishing spot brought back memories of "Dunefest" going on next to Umpqua Lighthouse State Park the summer we visited there.

Undeterred, we walked the 1 mile-each-way trail (that ran mostly along the lake's edge) anyway. It was nice, but nothing special (and the droning of motorboats faded about a half mile out). The only vaguely interesting thing of note was the way that driftwood seemed to accumulate in the northern coves of the lake.

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Monday was "dam day". The Lake of the Ozarks is similar to Lake Shasta (in CA) in that it was created by damming a waterway, and is used for hydroelectric power generation and recreation (although unlike Shasta, the water from Ozarks doesn't seem to explicitly be used for farming/irrigation). Our first stop was at the Visitor Center. Being owned by a power company, we were expecting a spartan, industrial VC with sterile, uninteresting displays; we were quite mistaken.

The actual VC is in the historic Willmore Lodge.

The history of the Lodge can be found here.

The view when you walk into the Lodge rivals that of some of the spiffy National Park hotels (unfortunately you can't get a photo that captures both the interior and view out the windows at the same time).

The view out the windows is essentially the same as this, taken from the deck out back.

The Museum was split across four of the back rooms, each covering a different time period / topic.

We found this particular display, that describes how Bagnell Dam got its name, particularly amusing.

Then we drove out to the various viewpoints for the Bagnell Dam itself. In almost stark contrast to the Visitor Center, we didn't find the dam itself particularly interesting to look at (perhaps having been spoiled by some of the more spectacular western U.S. dams we've visited?).

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Tuesday morning, we left our campsite at Lake of the Ozarks for the last time. This map shows all the places we had visited in our week there.

As we headed on our way out of Missouri, the name of this little town caught our eye as we saw it approaching on the mileage signs. We had hoped to capture a little "Welcome to..." (or at least town name with population) sign on the way in but there was none to be found. The name appearing on the bank was almost better, though.

We wouldn't want to have to be applying for a loan there! 😉 (In retrospect, it's probably not surprising that a town with that name wouldn't spring for any sort of "welcome" sign...)

We crossed over into Kansas around 2:50 in the afternoon. More on that next time...

Missouri, Part 3 - Hiking the Dragon [240417-23] (2024)

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