Meramec Caverns

 What does one do with a six year-old boy who has been enduring virtual classes for the past two months, and then has a misfortune to have his fall break occur on a week that is cool and wet?  Take him to a cave, of course!  And under the current weather conditions, the cave is warmer than the outside air.  That makes it all even better and a sure choice for a day's activities for our grandson Nathan.  We were also fortunate that it Meramec Caverns is commercially owned- had it been state operated it would have been closed because of the coronal virus.  And to be clear, our tour group in the cave was small and most wore masks.  It was possible to keep our distance from the other small family group.  We also noticed staff sanitizing the hand rails through out the cave.

The above tableau is what we saw shortly after we entered the cave with our guide.  History has it that Jesse James knew this cave fairly well.  During the Civil War he was part of a Confederate guerrilla group who blew up a Federal powder mill in in the cavern.  Later he used the cave for a hideout for his men and horses to conduct their nefarious activities.  In 1933 Lester Dill discovered the five upper levels of the cave.  Further explorations revealed 26 miles of underground passages.  By the way, the Meramec River runs through the first floor.

Using colored lights certainly creates some special awesome effects on the cave formations.  The above picture was taken in the Echo Room, located on the third floor of the cave.  The colorful formations are reflected in a crystal clear pool.  

The above picture was taken in the Theater Room, and again colorful lights are used to show off "deep stone" draperies which are 70 feet tall, 60 feet across, and 35 feet thick.  This was at the end of the tour when we could sit in the seating provided and view a dramatic light and musical presentation.

 Unlike other caves we have toured, Meramec Caverns is a fairly easy place to tour what with wide walkways and easy inclines- except for the walk up a stairway of fifty some steps to the Wine Room.  Pictured above is a wine table propped up with a long brace.  It has a couple of wine bottles sitting atop it.  According to our guide, it is the "only completely natural three-legged onyx table known"  The room also has one of the two largest ragonites in the world.  Ragonites are a carbonate mineral formed under water.  This area of the caverns was a natural cavity filling with water over millions of years which also produced the necessary chemistry for the formation of stalagmites that resemble clusters of grapes.  Our grandson seemed to enjoy the tour, the hour and half walk burned up some of his energy and he had the opportunity to chatter with another young child on the tour.  Attending school virtually has given him very little opportunity to connect socially with other children his age.

Cass Scenic Railroad State Park

 Cass use to be a logging town where its citizens mostly worked either at the saw mill or on the railroad during the early 1900s.  We did not do our homework in planning our visit to this park, but with only 3 days to see the sights of this part of West Virginia, we were not very upset in missing all that Cass had to offer us.  As we always tell each other, we will cover that when we come back to West Virginia.

In the background of the picture is the town's lumber warehouse.  It is now a theater with a film on the town as well as a diorama depicting the the town of Cass when it was a booming logging community.  The film was just starting to run and we thought we would go in to see it, but the man welcoming us into the building was not wearing his mask.  We chose to not enter the building.  This park has an authentic operating museum of lumber railroading.  It moved in 7 steam-driven locomotives from around the states which were all made in the early 1900s to move heavy freight as coal and lumber.  They were also built for going over steep grades and sharp curves.  The park offers an 11 mile train ride from the station in Cass- unfortunately there is only one train leaving per day and reservations need to be made ahead of time.  That left us out.

There are guided tours of the town, as we came into Cass the last tour was occurring, so we missed out on that too.  However, there were interpretive signs in front of some of the structures which gave us a bit of an idea of its citizenry when the town the was a bustling lumbering town.  The home above was "Piney" William's home, he and his wife lived there from 1902-1942.  They wife raised 6 children in that house.  Piney had the reputation of taking more logs off Black Mountain than any other engineer on the logging railroad.

 

Part of the company store is now a museum of the town's history and artifacts.  Cass park was rife with tourists while we were there so we did not linger long inside any buildings.  Gift shops had large bottles of hand sanitizer available to be used by everyone coming inside; shopkeepers watched that very closely, also they saw to it that masks were on.  Apparently West Virginia has seen an increase of coronal virus cases recently.  Anxious to be away from crowds we hiked on a trail which ran alongside the railroad.  A man coming off the trail informed us that he had seen a bear cub crossing the trail ahead of him. We never saw the bear, but did espy this beautiful wildflower, a closed gentian which blooms during the late summer and early fall.  This ends my postings on West Virginia, it was a joy to share it with you our readers!

 

Whispers and Waterfalls

 As I have written previously, this trip to West Virginia was one of pure beauty, not only up high in the sky, but also down low on the ground.  I just have to show you one more picture of the colorful world of moss, this one we found on the Whispering Spruce Trail on Spruce Knob.

This is a good segue into learning about whispers of the universe.  We visited Green Bank Observatory, where the sign on the science center there proclaims: "the universe is whispering to us".  In 1937 Grote Reber built the parabolic telescope pictured below.  Roughly parabolic telescope means one which reflects signals that go back to a receiver.  Using this telescope Reber found radio emissions from the Milky Way and sun- in 1941 he created the first radio map of the sky.  After the Second World War radio astronomy took off due to new receiver technology.   

It was a cloudy wet day when we visited the observatory.  Unfortunately the Science center and other buildings were closed, but we found many interpretive signs explaining radio astronomy and its advancement through the years.  We also picked up a brochure which gave us a self-guided tour and site map of the many telescopes scattered over the grounds.  By the way, this is a government agency and one area was clearly marked that no one should enter past a certain point.  Also, all electronic devices were expected to be turned off.

There is an observation deck available, and from there we could view the Green Bank Telescope which is 485 feet high and has a feeder arm rising above the dish to support sensitive receivers.  It is the world's largest steerable telescope.

Sorry if that is a bit hazy, I had to zoom my camera a good bit to take it.  There is another telescope on the grounds built by the Navy which was built to measure highly accurate time, continental drift, and the Earth's wobble.  Another older telescope was built to search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, but no signals were found.  In 1974 a mobile telescope aided in the discovery of the black hole in the center of our galaxy (called Sagittarius A).  All important scientific advancements of which I had no clue was  taking place until we stopped at Green Bank, reading that sort of material is more of John's interest than mine.

Now we are back down to earth again, at Blackwater Falls State Park.  This park lies just west of the Allegheny Front- a high escarpment that acts as a drainage divide between the Ohio and Potomac River systems.  The Blackwater River plunges 57 feet down and then flows through the Blackwater Canyon into the Ohio River, joining the Mississippi and the the Gulf of Mexico.  It was difficult to hike into any area near the falls, and walking any trails the day we were there was not advisable because of the wet weather.  One last picture here, and that is of Canaan Valley, an area through which the Blackwater River flows.  Again, this picture demonstrates the awesome beauty of the fall colors which seemed to be at their peak while we visited West Virginia.  Mist over the mountains clouded them a bit the day I took that picture.  Still, it was all quite beautiful!

Dolly Sods Wilderness Area

 During the summer trails in the parks of Missouri were scenic with the wildflowers in bloom, but by the end of August most of that beauty was gone.  So it was a complete surprise for John and I to see how pretty the ground was at Dolly Sods.  This area is the highest plateau of its type east of the Mississippi with an altitude ranging from around 4,000 at the top of a mountain ridge on the Allegheny Ridge to about 2,700 feet at creek level.  It is a part of the Monongahela National Forest.   Dolly Sods got its name from the Dalhe family who expanded the sods (grass patches) of this area for sheep grazing.   This wilderness area has open grassy fields, upland bogs, extensive rocky plains as well as open mountain vistas.  There are 8 trails to discover all the beauty of this area.

The above picture should give you an idea of how beautiful the ground was, which we could see from a boardwalk over the bog.  Mosses in a variety of color were all over the bog- from light green to dark green and white to creamy in color.  Cranberries could be seen in the mix, and  had we been there during the summer we would have seen such insect-eating plants as the sun dew; we did see a few dried up ones.

 This is another one of the very scenic sights of Dolly Sods.  In the foreground is the white of the cotton grass mixed with the red of the huckleberry plants.  This area had a lot of devastation to it in the early 1900s with a logging boom, fire also ravaged it.  In the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps planted thousands of red pine and spruce.  Congress further protected it by designating it a wilderness area in 1975.  The picture below should also give you an idea of the rocky terrain we also encountered.

 

 The second hike we took at Dolly Sods was one that led us down to Red Creek.  It was a far piece to walk after already hiking around the bog, but we were determined to find the creek.  We got close enough to the creek to get only a small glimpse of it.  And we were rewarded for our persistence; as we were pleasantly surprised to see a beaver dam off in the distance in the creek. It was a fairly large dam with about 3 feet long logs jutting out of the creek and leaning over a large  mass of wood.  As we started to leave the creek,  Amanda pointed out some tree trunks that had to have been gnawed by the beavers building that dam.

Below is scenic overlook which gave us a sweeping view to the east of the Potomac River Valley and of the mountain ridges which extend into Virginia.

 

A Journey to West Viginia

 This was not a spur of the moment trip by any means.  We had this in the planning with our son Daniel and his wife Amanda for at least several months.  Because of  corona virus we all agreed to self quarantine for 10 days before getting together and sharing a cabin.  Meeting up with your loved ones is possible with everyone agreeing to self-quarantine ahead of time- something to think about with the holidays coming up.  And we may have gotten the number of days wrong, it should be 14 instead of 10.  The road trip did seem strange, what with always having to remember to wear our mask anytime we stepped out of the car.  Our stops were brief, no lingering in store or touching merchandise.  The trip seemed strange in another sense- in just the weird feeling of being miles away from the small circumscribed world we had surrounded ourselves with the past seven months- something akin to bursting out of prison!  

We saw very little of fall colors, except for the blazing yellow of maple leaves, while driving through the mid-western states.   That dramatically changed once we drove into the higher elevations of West Virginia.  Seneca Rocks, pictured above, is in the north central area of the state.  The 900-foot quartzite formation is in the North Fork Valley of the Monongahela National Forest.  I took that picture standing in front of our cabin.  Seneca Rocks got its name from the Seneca Indians who made the area their home.  They were probably the first of many who have scaled the walls of the mountain over the years.  In 1943-44 The U.S. military used Seneca Rocks to train troops for mountaineering.

No, that was not our cabin, we had a standard A-frame vacation home rented from the Yokum's Vactionland Resort.  The Yokum family has a connection to the above house.  Shirley Yokum (who passed this year at the age of 100) was the granddaughter of the family who owned it.  It was constructed in 1839 by Jacob Siles.  A son, William, added a second story.  He fought in the Confederacy of the Civil War.  Several descendants lived in the home until 1947 when the Forest Service purchased the home.  It is called a "Melting Pot" house as it is a Appalachian building with German features as well as Tudor fireplaces and French influences seen in the southern style front porch and summer kitchen. 

We drove up to Spruce Knob (also located in the Monongahela Forest, as well as did some hiking in the area.  It is the highest peak at 4,860 feet, in West Virginia.  The picture above is just one of the many sights we viewed overlooking hardwood forests of maple, beech, cherry- all dressed in the finest fall colors which we have not seen in a long time.  Spruce trees are also plentiful, with limbs on only one side because of a strong breeze which blows and prevents growth on the other.  Hence the nickname of

"The land of the Whispering One Sided Spruce".  I have more to share with you on this fantastic mountainous region in my next posting.

This and That

 Fort Zumwalt back in its day certainly had to have some water source.  Today Lake Whetsel can be found in the park, and it is located over a natural spring.

We had the three grandchildren with us and they had gotten quite restless touring the historic buildings. They had very little patience learning about events which happened 200 years ago!   Walking around the lake was a more interesting adventure for them.  There were ducks in the water which they enjoyed watching, but I was intrigued by some beautiful bright red tropical-looking plants growing at the water's edge.

By doing some research on her i phone, my daughter discover that the plant is called lobelia.  We also enjoyed seeing the last few roses growing behind the Heald house.

What a beautiful dog rose, again we discovered the plant's name by referring to the phone  You may notice a patch of dark blue behind the flower.  It is part of a bridal bouquet of silk flowers which our grandson found- I have no idea how we missed that pretty object when admiring the rose!  It must have been dropped after a wedding at the Heald house.  The house can be rented out for special occasions.

 

Fort Belle Fontaine is located in the northeastern corner of St.Louis County, so it was a short trip over to Alton, Illinois.  I wanted to see the statue of "Alton's Gentle Giant" again and John wanted to see Amtrak's new train station.  Robert Pershing Wadlow was the tallest man in the world.  He lived from 1918 to 1940.  At his death he was eight feet 11 inches, and weighted 490 pounds.  The owner of a furniture company noticed how uncomfortable Robert was sitting in a chair so he had a special one made to fit Robert's dimensions.  A replica of that chair is pictured below. 

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Two Forts in Missouri

 The two forts which I am writing about in this posting were easily within a days drive from us, one of them them in the next municipality from us.

Well, that certainly looks like a fort, right?   It is Fort Belle Fontaine, located on the banks of the Missouri River and also at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.  It was built in 1805 and is where Lewis and Clark spent the first and last nights of their western expedition.  Their first night was on an island opposite Coldwater Creek and the last night was at the fort.  In 1915 it became Belle Fontaine Farms, a home for boys.  The remnants of the sweeping staircase seen above are what is left of a 1930s WPA project ordered by President Roosevelt to make the home more attractive. 

 So that does not look like a fort either, right?  This picture was taken at Fort Zumwalt state park in O'Fallon.  In 1799 Daniel Boone's family, as well as the Jacob Zumwalt family, bought land in this area through the Spanish land grants.  Indian uprisings were common at this time and the War of 1812 spilled over into the Ohio and Mississippi valleys.  The Boone and Zumwalt familys proceeded  to build shelter forts.  The above house was enlarged, portholes and a stockade fence added.  As many as  ten frontier familys took refuge within the Zumwalt fort.  An aside here, the park is replete with interpretive signs all over its grounds- enough to make my eyes glaze over.  A  lot of American history can be found here.  Jacob Zumwalt and four of his brothers were heroes in the Revolutionary war.  The next owner of the Zumwalt building was Major Nathan Heald, he acquired the property in 1817.  Nathan and his wife were survivors of the battle of Fort Dearborn.  That battle occurred during the War of 1812 in an area near Chicago.  Darius Heald, only son of Nathan, grew up in the original house until 1886 when he built another home ( which is also located in the park).  We toured both homes while visiting there.

Before I talk about the second house, however, there is so much more history to write about on the original building.  About 1825 it became a slave plantation with 27 slaves.  A school house, kitchen, barn, and loom room were added to the property.  Slaves were sold off in 1857 when Rebekah Heald died, she was Nathan's wife.  Another interesting piece of information here was that this fort was raided by the Union Army during the Civil War.

Above is the house which Darius Heald built in 1886.  The original log cabin/fort was gone, only the chimney was left standing.  Edmonia Heald (daughter of Darius), according to the 1910 census, was owner of the home at that time. By 1917 the Heald family did not own the property.   In 1937 the grounds became a state park, and by 2001 the buildings were fully restored.  A couple other interesting notes here- the Daughters of the War of 1812 met in the buildings until 1918, and Darius Held allowed Methodists services for the area to be conducted in his home.  More on this interesting park in my next posting.

 

Stepping out of our saftey zone to the ST.Louis Art Museum

Yes, in these frightening times of the pandemic, going anywhere, which guarantees meeting up with people who might have the coronal virus, is challenging.  However, we were now into four months of our isolation and I especially wanted to see the St.Louis Art Museum's special exhibit "Millet and Modern Art".  It was well worth taking the challenge, and we were happy we went.  If we were careful we did not need to touch anything; museum staffers with big smiles opened the doors for us.  Inside everyone was wearing masks and there was no crowding, we were able to keep an appropriate distance from everyone. 

Jean  Francois Millet (1814-1875) was a French painter know for developing "innovative imagery of rural peasant and landscapes".  Any quotes I write here are from the informational signs accompanying the art work.  In 1885 Vincent Van Gogh wrote :"Millet is Father Millet, counselor, and mentor in everything for young artists".   Between 1869 and 1890 Van Gogh produced 20 copies of Millet's work.  You may be familiar with Van Gogh's painting "Starry Night".  Pictured below is the first one of that theme painted by Millet.  It is of a rural scene complete with with a farm wagon," shooting stars and constellations and planets".  The painting by Van Gogh is more of a town scene with a church in the background.  I would find it hard to make a judgment on either, I like them both!

 In his painting The Reaper Van Gogh sought to"translate"  the original painting by Millet into color.

The exhibit also included an art work from the American painter Winslow Homer (1836-1910) it is titled Return of the Gleaner.  The painting depicts a very confident female peasant out in the harvest field. 

I thought that I knew something of art history, and I was very surprised to learn in this exhibit how many artists copied Millet's themes and put their own interpretation on how they saw his paintings.  Besides the ones I mentioned here; there were also paintings by Claude Monet, Camille Pisaro, George Saurat, Edgar Degas and Salvador Dali.  And speaking of the latter painter, the picture of The Angelus (first one in this posting on the exhibit's display board) was redone by him with a totally different theme.  To me The Angelus is a peaceful theme of two peasants taking a moment to pray at sunset.  Dali put a different approach on it totally.  He drew a man embracing a nude woman.  Another younger kneeling man with a conical head is on the ground next to them  Apparently he is the couple's dead son.  And Dali painted the woman as a nude, hinting at an incestuous relationship with her son.  It is titled "Meditation on a Harp".

A Return to Don Robinson State Park

 The blog post of July third mentioned this park located in Jefferson County Missouri.  The original owner had claimed that it was a " wild and woody area with lots of canyons" which John and I were most desirous to find- but not the first day we were there because of having our young grandchildren along.  We came back towards the end of August and started out on the Sandstone Canyon Trail.

Immediately coming onto that trail I detected a very foul odor.  I blamed it on the masses of mushrooms along our path, and they very much looked like excrement.  Upon closer examination, I deduced they were mushrooms, of the type which I had not seen before, and at home later I was not able to identify.

 

 The canyon trail was assessed as "moderate" and it was a bit of a challenge.  We traversed up and down ravines on rocky paths. Fortunately we thought to bring along our walking sticks.  Pictured above is one of several rock walls we saw.  And we kept thinking that soon we would see a canyon, with no luck.  It was a warm and humid day, after about 2 miles on the trail we took a connector tail off the canyon trail and headed back to our car.  But before we did that we met up with a gentleman who pointed us to another part of the same trail and encouraged us to take that path to view some awesome canyon sightings. Sounded tempting, but that would have entailed us walking two more miles on another rough part of the trail.  We were too hot and tired to consider it.

 

 

We returned to the park a  couple of week later on a much cooler day.  I took the above picture by turning around and getting the shot upward on the path.  Should give you an idea of the rocky paths we encountered hiking alone the ridge line of a box canyon- pretty much the type of trail we had also encountered on our last trip there.  The challenge of the trail did not bother us this time, we knew now we were going to see a canyon.  And so we kept trudging along yet still no sight of a canyon.  John made the comment that some people who had not been to the Grand Canyon just had nothing to compare the canyons here with the sights out west.

                                         

Looking down off our path we started to see the box canyon. Still hard to determine whether that is what we were looking for.

Sorry, that is the best I can give you of what we saw, between all the brush and trees and the presence of bright sunlight I just could not get the awesome picture I was looking for.  I would imagine in winter it probably could be more impressive.  I will end here with another natural wonder which John noticed as we finished the trail.  It is a natural stone bridge which we crossed on our path.

 

 

Klondike Park, Augusta, Missouri

The corona virus, as all of you know, is continuing to affect our lives; and mostly not for the good.  However, it is certainly forcing John and I to make frequent road trips around Missouri to keep us pleasantly occupied.   And that is not all that bad as we have discover some very scenic parks, one of which is Klondike park located in St .Charles County, near Augusta, Missouri.  

 First thing we noticed upon entering the park was the visitor's center, which is currently closed because of the pandemic.  The center sits in front of a towering river bluff.  We found a path nearby and climbed to its top.  From that vantage point we were able to see over the Missouri River.  In the distance is the Labadie Power Plant.

 Interpretive signs in the park mentioned that the Lewis and Clark expedition camped across the river not far from this area, and met up with an Native American tribe.   All total Lewis and Clark met up with 50 Native American tribes during the time of their travels west in the early 1800s.  Lewis and Clark developed a ritual with all the Indian chiefs during which they informed them that their land belonged to the United States and a new “great white Father”, Thomas Jefferson.  They then would present the Indian chief with a medal which had the face of Jefferson and one side and two hands clasping on the other. 

  The quarry was first mined for silica sand taken from the St.Peterson limestone in 1898. After being blasted out of the rock it was crushed and shipped to an off- site location to be manufactured into glass and other industrial products.  In 1945 232,420 tons of sandstone was shipped out to meet war demands.  The quarry was shut down in 1983.
                                         

The park has a campground and a lake for fishing.  With the river bluffs and quarry lake it is a very scenic area.  There are many signs indicating that swimming is not allowed, but apparently the people swimming in the lake did not see them.

 

July Car Trips

It was on a hot humid Sunday afternoon when we took a drive to Graham State Park.  My sister Julia and her husband had camped in a park near Graham that week-end and a picture on Facebook of Cal standing by a beautiful cool river bank (the Loutre River flows through the park) prompted me to suggest a road trip there.  The park is 2 miles west of Danville, Mo on state highway TT, just off of Highway 70,  about one hour drive west of St.Louis.  John thought he had visited the park in the past, I was sure that I had not. 

The cave has an enormous entrance which is 120 feet and 16 feet high.  It extends into the hillside behind it for about 100 feet.  Walking into it is forbidden as more research is needed for the cave as deciphering and recording.  Graham Cave is listed on the National Registration of Historic Places and considered a National Landmark.  There are many interpretive signs in front of the cave explaining why it is so historically important.  It is a Pre-Columbian archeological site dating back as early as 10,000 years, this was proven by the artifacts of bone, stone and clay excavated in the cave.  It is thought that the people living here were hunters and gatherers; hunting game, and gathering fruits and nuts.  There were streams in the area for fishing also.  Speaking of streams, as we walked away from the cave, setting out on a trail nearby, we found ourselves in a beautiful forest glen with a small stream.  Other features of the park include sandstone cliffs, bottom land forest and open rocky glades, none of which we had the time to explore that day.

The other interesting piece of history regarding this park is that Daniel Boone’s two sons Nathaniel and Daniel took out claims in an area south of the park about 1800.   Dr. Graham bought land from Daniel in 1829 and built a home, also later expanding his holdings to include the cave.  In 1964 a Graham great-granddaughter donated 237 acres around Graham cave to Missouri. 

On another hot day in July Melissa and her three children joined us for a trip to Columbia Bottoms to see a field of sunflowers in bloom.  Sadly, we were about a week too late, and no blooming flowers could be seen from the road.  But then we saw some people walking out of a field of sunflowers onto a very muddy path.  We were informed that there were sunflowers in bloom, and walking on that muddy path was necessary to see them.  I was about ready to head out on that path, except for the fact that I encountered a woman who had slipped and fallen.  Her white capris were now a very muddy brown.  She declared that it was worth it.  I lost my courage to embark on that path into the field, but our daughter Melissa offered to go.  She removed her shoes and I handed her my camera.  She was successful with no muddy mishaps and we all got to see the flowers on my camera, which miraculously did not meet up with a muddy bath either.