The Second Day of Our Trip along the Ozark National Scenic Riverways

 The natural sights we sought out on our second day in the beautiful rolling hills of the Ozarks continued to take us again over winding roads, some of which again were gravel.  By the way, Salem Missouri Tourism Committee has written a brochure detailing directions to most of the sights which I have been writing about in this post and the previous one.  It would be helpful to have that in hand, given our experiences with searching out these areas- one particular place, which I will mention next, even had its sign fallen off!    

                                                      
Pictured above is Rocky Falls, the day we were there it had quite an awesome flow of water due to the recent rains.  The interpretive sign here notes that the abundance of rock here, called rhyolite porphyry, was " formed as molten rock deep within the earth and flowed onto the surface about 1.5 billion years ago".  A better picture of the black rock formations is seen in the picture below.  I did some climbing over the rocks until a fine mist of the falls fell on my face.  That was refreshing as it was a rather warm day!

                                                      
Our nest stop of the day was Blue Springs.  Native Americans once called the place the "spring of the summer sky".  It is Missouri's deepest as well as most beautiful at 310 feet deep, and is usually a vivid deep blue color due to dissolved minerals present in it.  We could not see that deep blue the day we were there because of recent rainfall.   Actually,  I must say I saw some  of that pretty blue more in the pictures I took of the spring!

                                                      
One other note here before I end this posting.  My readers are well aware for my penchant for identifying birds and flowers.  Hiking around in the Ozarks i saw a very pretty white flower with 8 petals and yellow stamens in the middle.  It is called bloodroot, according to my Missouri Wildflower book.  It was used by Native Americans as an insect repellent, dye, ceremonial pigment, and for a variety of medicines.  Extracts of the plant are used in toothpaste.  Other spring flowers which we found were the Dutchman britches and Virginia bluebells.  It was so good to see those first signs of spring!