Tuesday, Apr 9:

We left Doniphan this morning and drove the roughly 1-1/2 hr drive NW to Eminence.  The person who owns the campground where we stayed in Doniphan, also owns a campground in Eminence.  She was telling stories about all of the great places to see there, so we decided to give it a try for a few days.  It started raining as we left but stopped by the time we reached the new campground.  We settled in but apparently she is just now opening the place after the winter, so we are hoping the maintenance person gets here and opens the bath house.  It would be nice to have a real shower.

We were told we should see Alley Spring Mill, so we went there first and took a short hike around the place. (Pictures coming as soon as we get back to the trailer.)

While hiking around we happened upon the Chinese looking guy, we’re talking to him about the eclipse, when he suddenly says, “I think I know you two!”, looks at Kelly and says, “rocks, right?!”  At that point we realized we had met him before but couldn’t quite place it!  We think it was probably in New Mexico, many months back!  Very strange!

After that, we drove to what was named Blue Spring on the map. When we started going down a long grave road, we started thinking maybe this wasn’t THE Blue Spring, and it turned out we were correct, however the place has lots of really interesting rocks and is very pretty, so it kept Kelly & Richard busy for quite a few hours.

Blue Spring (Not The Blue Spring, however)

(I’m writing this page so far from my phone while sitting on the banks of the river. We’ll post more pictures once we’re back “home, where the kitties lie sleeping…”

Wednesday, April 10:

Spent all morning taking care of things related to the trailer which needed doing, and also updating these pages.  We were expecting rain all day today, from the forecast, but it hasn't happened so far.  Currently, we're waiting for phone to computer syncing to finish.  The Apple iphone connections for both Richard's and Kelly's phones have been very unreliable and keep breaking the sync connection, such that we need to find another cable and start over.  It's very frustrating and has taken hours, literally!  Kelly's is now, finally, finishing up, but even that acts as though it's stuck.  We're waiting it out because I think it's working slowly.

Now that it's after 1pm, we really want to get going and actually see the real "Blue Spring".  There's a trailer of over a mile along the river to get to it, but some people also talk about another dirt road later which leads to a much shorter trail.  We want to try the shorter hike, just because it could start pouring rain at any time!

So, we drove down the dirt road to the closer trail and walked the very short trail to "Blue Spring" (this being the one on the "Current River", there are apparently many others!).  We want you all to realize that all of the water in this what looks like a huge river, ALL of it comes only from this one spring!

This spring produces roughly 90 million gallons of water daily!  Don't believe us?  Here's the official National Park Service page.

After we left the Blue Spring, we were driving back toward "home" when we saw a sign for "Owl Bend" (as in the bend in the river).  We drove down yet another long dirt road and ended up at an amazing "rock bar" (like a "sand bar", but made of rocks).