It was a really pretty drive down, with lots of redbud and dogwood trees blooming along the rural highway. Then as we drove into the park, we could see wildflowers on the hillside along the road: orange-yellow puccoon, neon purple verbena, bigger clumps of light- purple sweet William, and a glimpse of purple that were probably bird's-foot violets, which we hadn't seen there before. There were mayapples off in the woods, and as we drove along the creek toward the river, a carpet of spring beauties along the roadside...
We could see a few bluebells blooming along the bank of the creek, too - just a hint of what was to come.
We drove around the loop before stopping at the campground. Through the tallgrass prairie, then getting out at the picnic area to look at the river.
You can just make out a few green treetops, the ones that got their leaves early, off in the distance behind the grass stems.
The ground was carpeted with spring beauties (see above), purple violets and dandelions.
Closer to the riverbank, though, we could tell the area had been underwater not long ago - there was a layer of sand on top of the grass, and clumps of dead leaves caught in the trees on the bank, coming up to a height just below the level of the parking lot. I know it's gone over that level in the past.
There was a tree near where we parked that was blooming, with long frilly threads dangling down. When we looked closer we could see it was a boxelder tree (box elder? I've always said it as one word.) They are distinctive because the twigs and smaller branches are a vivid green, not just the usual brown and gray bark.
We parked by the showerhouse in the campground and started on the trail behind it, just past the amphitheater. This is part of a longer loop, the Swimming Deer trail, but we usually just walk the first section and then cut back through the campground.
The woods were bright and open, since very few trees had leaves on them. The wildflowers that bloom this time of year are called spring ephemerals, because they have to bloom quickly before the leaves come in on the trees and block the sunlight. (I had brought my copy of Denison's Missouri Wildflowers but left it in the car - we know most of the wildflowers along this trail at this season.
I spotted a lot of buckeye trees - what we've sometimes called "exploding trees", because of the way the new leaves and fronds burst out of the bud. Take a look - all of the greenery on this sapling came out of one single bud!
Trees eating trail signs. I don't think you want to follow that arrow...
We also saw some deer tracks in the mud of the trail!
Then the woods opened up again. We spotted trilliums - the dark red variety, smaller than the big white ones I saw in Michigan last year. Even a few yellow violets and bluebells!
As the trail nears the edge of the ridge, something changes. I'm not sure what these plants are, but they start growing at a fairly clear boundary line. Something in the soil, or the light?
Whatever they are, these things are GREEN. Very vivid! Some of them appeared to have been munched on by deer.
I mentioned yellow violets. Here's the proof, next to a regular purple violet. We always see a lot of yellow and white violets - more than the purple ones, really.
Looking down off the ridge as the trail starts to descend - almost there - there's a wonderful fragrance in the air...
BLUEBELLS!!!
As far as you can see!
Just a few weeks each year where you can see this - after that it all just DISAPPEARS. A lot of it ends up underwater several times a year.
They don't all bloom at the same time - each plant has a few buds left when the rest are open. A few still had just buds. They make me think of raisins.
There were a lot of "sweet william" along the trail as well.
Now we were seeing a lot of white violets, as well as yellow! There weren't actually very many purple ones through here.
Finally we reached the river.
Looking over at the gravel bar where we usually walk down by the water, we didn't know if we'd find a path that wasn't muddy - but we did find a way down. It had been underwater recently, too - this is just upstream from the picnic area where we stopped before.
Looking upstream... notice how all those sycamore trees are leaning out over the water? That's what happens when you're growing right at the edge of the riverbank and your roots are getting washed out on one side...
Proof of high water - leaves and other debris plastered against this tree, and a shallow well where the water swirled around the base of the tree and kept as much gravel from settling.
We spotted some butterflies out on the wet gravel - several zebra swallowtails and another that was black and blue... also a very busy bumblebee. I'm fairly sure the white splotch this zebra swallowtail is drinking from is a splat of heron guano - there were other wet patches but the insects kept zeroing in on this one. Yum!
Looking upstream again, from the further end of the gravel bar. Those washed-up leaves are above my head.
Close-up of the gravel we were walking on - when it wasn't sand or dirt. The gravel is left when the lighter stuff is washed away in the swifter currents.
Look closely at this one. I spotted some ripple marks, just another piece of evidence the river was flowing here recently. Then I realized - this is two different sets of ripple marks, going in two different directions!
I'm pretty sure this is because there is a low area starting on the right-hand side of this photo, that would have been a deep pool when the water was high - so the ripple marks on the upper left were on top of that gravel ridge, in shallow, fast-moving water; and the ones to the lower right were in deeper, slower-moving water. (If you don't find this kind of thing fascinating, I'd better warn you - I like to focus on stuff like that.)
As we neared the downstream end of the gravel bar, there was more and more debris washed up against the trees - including this monster of a log. Proof of the power of water. Never underestimate it.
As we walked up off the gravel bar and back into the woods, we were no longer on the main trail - there's a little network of side trails that run through the trees around there. Nearer the river there is so much sand in the soil that each trail is more of a wide trench, six to eight inches deep, with loose sandy dirt in the bottom.
We were looking for pawpaw trees, which we've seen blooming there before, but they weren't quite ready yet. We did see some green flowers - these will get bigger, open up more, and become a very dark red, like the trillium.
Some of the sycamore trees in this area are simply enormous. The ones nearer the river have a shallow well around the base, where water has swirled around them during floods - just like that little one at the gravel bar, only on a much bigger scale... This is my sister Joanne, proving their size.
There were a lot of leaves stuck in the bushes and smaller trees near the river, too - the water had been up over our heads not long ago. This is a good eight to ten feet above the river, too!
At one point we walked over to the bank to get a look at the river. Joanne, who was ahead of me, saw several turtles - but they saw her, too, and disappeared into the water before I could get there. They're very quick to take cover like that!
The flowers above are more spring beauties, which were blooming all along the trail in this area. The flowers below are false rue anemone, which we didn't see as much of - although we knew there was a big patch of them coming up.
On our later hike we would see rue anemone, which prefers drier wooded areas - false rue likes moist areas. There are other differences - false rue always has five petals, true rue varies; the leaves are attached differently, etc. We've looked them up enough times... but we remembered that we always see the false rue anemone on the trail by the river, and the true rue on the other trail we would be hiking later.
This is what we call the tree-o, three huge sycamores growing very close together - they may even have started from the same root. That's me lurking in between!
Around this time I was noticing something on the forest floor - lots of sycamore fluff. Sycamores release their seeds in the form of sycamore balls, golf-ball sized spheres that are basically just compacted seeds. When they come apart, the stuff around the seeds is somewhat fluffy, which allows the wind to disperse the seeds. There was a layer of this fluff on top of the leaves, etc. on the forest floor - I'm guessing a lot of the sycamore balls that had remained up in the treetops had been blown down and soaked by rain - or river water! - in the recent spring storms, and all that moisture made the sycamore balls just sort of explode. I've never noticed this before!
Here's the bank of false rue anemone, growing right at the edge of the forest before we walked out into the campground.
Here is a buckeye tree blooming! I had seen a few that weren't open yet, but this one at the edge of the woods was a little further along.
As we walked across the campground back to our car, we saw more flowers! First, a huge patch of violets in the grass near the playground...
Also, just a few of these Johnny Jump-Ups, which are in the violet family but are much smaller.
We hadn't gotten any good pictures of redbud trees yet, so walked over to the amphitheater near the trailhead where we had started, in order to get some close-ups of the one there. It's in the legume family, related to beans and peas! While we were walking back, I saw something jump - was it a cricket or a tiny toad or frog? We scuffled the grass until we saw it jump again... It was a teeny, tiny frog! I mean tiny - it could have sat on a penny with lots of room to spare. Some very cute wildlife.
At this point we went back to the car and drove to the picnic area for lunch and our second hike. I've decided to split that off into a second post, since I've already posted way too many pictures here!
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