On the first day of the road trip, I had planned some sightseeing that was on the way to our destination. As we headed east on Highway 60, we drove through several small towns, including Mansfield, MO, the home of my favorite author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote the “Little House” series of books about her childhood and coming of age. I mention this location because the first time I heard the title phrase from this blog post, was in her book from Laura’s beloved Pa. I also mention this location because had I not already been here several times in my life including with my family when I was ten, taking my own son to enjoy it and leading a couple of field trips with a hundred of so of my closest friends, I would have stopped here. At the historical site, is a beautiful, fairly new museum where real artifacts from the stories, such as Pa’s fiddle make her stories even more real. But, the short hike out to the home that her husband, Almanzo, built by hand is amazing. Each rock was carried up from a nearby river. The home is furnished as if the occupants had just left for a while and the visitors are pulling a “Goldilocks” and walking through the home. (Obviously the Goldilocks reference ends here, with no sitting, eating, or sleeping.) Laura was a tiny woman, and the house was built to her scale, so it is somewhat like a doll house.
My dad and I discussed these things as the car rolled towards the Eminence area in Shannon County, Missouri. Alley Springs Mill was our first stop. This is probably one of the most photographed sites in Missouri, with good reason. It is almost impossible to take a bad picture of the bright red mill reflecting into the blue waters of the Alley Spring, which is the 7th largest spring in Missouri, releasing 81 million gallons of water each day. The trail that we took was short and traced the perimeter of the spring. The mill was open to the public with artifacts from its past on display. I would coin this location the “gem of our trip.”
The “wild horses” in the title also refer to part of the reason for the trek around Shannon County. In the rural areas along the Ozarks National Scenic Riverways designation, live four herds of wild horses. We were hoping to find at least one of the herds sometime during the day. We traveled back into the town of Eminence and then north to Round Spring and Round Spring Cave to walk the trail and possibly spot the horses in the park. The cave was closed to visitors at the current time.
The Round Spring, which gets its name from being round like a silver dollar, was less than impressive. Actually, the photo doesn’t do the location justice, for the opposite reason people normally say this phrase. The 25-ish mile round trip out of the way, would have only been worthwhile had we found the horses. But, they remained elusive, with only some evidence on the trail that they had once been there.
After returning to Eminence, we drove east on Highway 106 to find the rest of the day’s destinations down county roads, some paved and some, not so much. Rocky Falls is another area where some of the wild horses hang out and although they were not there on this beautiful afternoon, the falls were active and lovely, despite our stretch of mostly dry summer weather in Missouri. It was a short hike to the rocky beach and a swimming area just below the falls. There was a small trail that made for fairly easy access to climb the falls, but if you decide to do this, know that the wet rocks are slick. Some people were crossing the swimming area to climb the rocks and watching a person slide off with her wet feet, was evidence that this was not the best way to do it. As I safely climbed down from the photo op on the falls, I noticed a trail of red that indicated to me that someone else who had climbed the falls prior, was not that fortunate. Speaking of unfortunate, this word also describes the search for wild horses.
Blue Spring was our final stop before continuing to our cabin along the Black River for the night. This spring, the largest in Missouri, and one of the largest in the country, is deep enough to sink the Statue of Liberty with her torch five feet under water. The amazingly blue spring boasts a flow of 87 million gallons per day into the Current River. Confusingly, there are two Blue Springs in the area, so directions are important. (The other one is part of the same National Riverways, but on the Jacks Fork River and not nearly as big.) Also, be aware that there is a steep gravel road leading to it for several miles. It is fine for a regular passenger car most of the time, but it is not recommended for RVs or buses. We were in a two-door sedan and there was no problem.
Wild horses couldn’t drag us away from this trip. Well, that’s mostly because we never found the wild horses. I guess that means we’ll have to return to this area again sometime.
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Retired Girl in a Beautiful World 