Ramblings of a Nature Lover: Heading south

Today we took yet another scenic drive! This time it was just my parents and me. We drove south of St. Louis, down into the St. Francois Mountains - in fact St. Francois State Park was our first stop (after breakfast at Burger King...) This is one of our go-to parks for "getting our nature fix", and we almost always go there to see wildflowers in the spring, and fall colors in the autumn. The fall colors aren't turning out to be as spectacular this year, but there were a lot of individual trees that had some nice color.

We drove around the main road, and through the campground - all the sites were full for a Halloween event that's happening tonight! There were a lot of pumpkins and decorations around - it looked like fun, and it was definitely perfect weather for camping. In fact, it was actually hot out! It felt strange to be wearing shorts outside when a week ago I was wearing my fleece jacket and stocking hat inside the visitor center at Miner's Castle!

We stopped at the picnic area on our way out to check out Coonville Creek, a beautiful little Ozark stream. There's a gravel bar right there, so you can get down to the water.

There are little fish in that pool - minnows, but also some bigger little ones. I tossed bits of gravel in, one at a time, to watch them dart for it to see if it was food. A regular feeding frenzy!

Leaves on the water.

Little frog on the leaves! This is about life size.

I picked up a rock to look for agate patterns and found a passenger! Two daddy-long-legs, which are related to spiders but are not quite the same thing. They didn't want to step onto my hand, so I was able to get a good look. They also didn't want to stay put for a photo!

Here's some of that agate banding, in a big chunk of quartz. That's what most of the rocks in the stream here are made of - quartz and chert (another form of quartz, without big crystals.) Since it's the second hardest mineral in the world, they last a long time, long after any other rocks have broken up.

We considered walking further upstream, but we would have run out of gravel bar. There's actually a lovely trail that goes along the creek on the other side, but we wanted to continue our drive south instead of hiking this time.

More bellflower! I am amazed that both yesterday and today, my camera was able to accurately capture the shade of these blossoms - it has trouble with blue and purple, especially of flowers.

Here are some more examples of the quartz rocks. The whole gravel bar is made up of this (and obviously the rest of the stream bed as well.) Those lumpy looking things are druzy quartz, where crystals have formed outward in layers - if you look close you can see some agate banding as well, tiny stripes that mark those layers. Sometimes these can be very sparkly indeed!

Heeere, fishy, fishy, fishy...

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe this is Jerusalem Artichoke, blooming in the woods at the edge of the gravel bar.

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After we left St. Francois State Park, we kept heading south on 67, and pulled off suddenly to drive up to the Knob Lick fire tower. (The name refers to an old salt lick, apparently; "Knob" just refers to the mountain itself.) The tower itself isn't really used any more, and you can't climb all the way up, but it's a beautiful spot because the whole mountain top is an open glade, with exposed rocks allowing a spectacular view.

Unfortunately, there were incredible numbers of ladybugs there - I'm pretty sure they're an invasive type, because of the size of the swarm - and they BIT. They were landing all over us, and since we were wearing shorts we kept getting bitten! We did not spend nearly as long as we often do at this spot - just enough to take in the view, and the gorgeous colors of the sumac bushes and red oak trees.

I managed to run into a bunch of stick-tights - seeds with natural Velcro, that cling to whatever brushes against them. If I hadn't noticed them before I got in the car, these seeds would have been spread a long way from their source!

Our final stop was Silver Mines Recreation Area, which is part of Mark Twain National Forest. It's another place we used to go camping all the time. We got there just in time for lunch, and it was so nice sitting in the shade looking at the colors in the trees, and the river down below... We sat around just enjoying the day and reading our books for quite a while.

Later in the afternoon we walked across the bridge and upstream a little ways, and followed a side trail out to the rocks.

This part of the river is a shut-ins - forced into a narrow channel of hard rock. It's amazing how huge granite boulders can be worn so smooth - and even when dry, they are incredibly slippery! We had to step very carefully.