St Francois State Park
Leaving Finger Lakes park and driving to St. Francois State Park:
It was a fairly uneventful drive and not very long.
Along the way, we stopped in at Mastodon State Historic Site, only to find that they're closed on Monday and Tuesday!
We parked, put the kitties into the trailer, opened both roof vents, turned on the roof vent fans, and opened some windows on the shade side of the trailer, but since it was 89 outside, it quickly go to 94 inside the trailer! Fortunately, Richard was monitoriung it and his watch notified him on the high temperature. We care about our kitties!
Returning to the trailer, Richard grabbed the cats and put them into the truck with the AC running. They seemed relieved.
None-the-less, Kelly got some pictures along the short, 1/4 mile, hike at the park.
Dwarf Larkspur or Spring Larkspur
Phlox divaricata, the wild blue phlox, woodland phlox, or wild sweet william
Glandularia, common name mock vervain or mock verbena
Lunaria annua, commonly called honesty or annual honesty
Lots of Honesty! We could all do with more Honesty!
Honeysuckle
Red Oak
Stylophorum diphyllum, commonly called the celandine poppy or wood poppy
Phlox divaricata, the wild blue phlox, woodland phlox, or wild sweet william
We then made our way to St. Francois State Park. When we drove in and told them we were in sire 10, they told us, "You really don't want that site. Let's move you to somewhere else." We took their advice (after all, they know their campground better than we do!) and they moved us to site 4. While we were looking that over, another camp host drove up in a little golf cart, so we discussed the pros and cons of all of the sites. He very kindly drove us over to site 10 and we saw that while it's a drive-through site, it also has a huge mound in the middle! We looked over many other sites and ultimately decided on a totally differnet site. They don't currently have very many people here, so we had many choices.
Thus, we settled in and went on the usual hike down to the sand bar in the stream next to the campground, where Kelly found many cool rocks of interest!
We had seen this black butterfly in a few places and Kelly kept trying to photograph it, however it never seemed to settle down anywhere! Finally, today, she had her chance and got some pictures of it!
Battus philenor, the pipevine swallowtail or blue swallowtail
Same butterfly as above, showing the underside of the wings
Aesculus glabra, commonly known as Ohio buckeye, Texas buckeye, fetid buckeye, and horse chestnut
Ornithogalum umbellatum, the garden star-of-Bethlehem, grass lily, nap-at-noon, or eleven-o'clock lady
American Robin
Phacelia purshii, known by the common names Miami mist, scorpionweed, and purple scorpionweed
Closeup of the same flower as above. Interesting little fingers on the ends of the petals.
Here are some of the rocks found at the streem sand bar. The lighting doesn't really show all of the sparkling in some of them.
That's all for tonight! Tomorrow, we plan to go on a boat through through a mine! ... Or not!
Tuesday, April 16:
Well, it turns out that the mine is still on winter hourx, so is only running tours on Friday-Sunday. On well...
First, Kelly went to look at rocks again on the same stream where she was yesterday.
Zebra Swallow Tail Buterfly (a turquoise morph)
Instead, we decided to visit "Devil's Honeycomb", which is a trail going up Mount Hughes. We had some exciting weather! On the way up, it was beginning to look like rain and we had notifications of possible thundershowers and even tornadoes, but really it didn't look that bad to us, so we continued, figuring we would turn back if it started getting really bad. It never did and we made it to the top, with some fantastic views.
Prickly Pear Cactus
Camassia scilloides is a perennial herb known commonly as Atlantic camas, wild hyacinth, and eastern camas
halictrum thalictroides, the rue-anemone or windflower
Viola pedata, the birdsfoot violet, bird's-foot violet, or mountain pansy,
Juniper struggling to grow in rock
mosses and lichens
more mosses and lichens
Understory plants were previously destroyed by fire, so the forest floor is very spare.
Moss after the rain which we received on the way back down.
Pacific Hound's Tongue
Afterward, we went to Wallmart on the way back to the trailer, but then, as we entered our park, we suddenly decided to follow this "Mooner's Hollow Trail" which actually starts from within our St. Francois State park. It was very late in the day, but we just wanted to see the supposed waterfall, which is at the point in the trail where it turns back in a loop. As we returned to the truck in the parking lot, it was about 30 minutes after sunset and was rather dark.
Zizia aurea ("golden alexander") is a flowering herbaceous perennial plant of the carrot family Apiaceae
Erigeron pulchellus, the Robin's plantain, blue spring daisy or hairy fleabane
Rose Mock Vervain
Castilleja coccinea, commonly known as scarlet Indian paintbrush or scarlet painted-cup
So, here's the waterfall at the turn-aound point of the trail. Nice, but worth a 1-1/2 hour round trip endng after sunset?
Returning home to the kitties, we feed them, watched the fireflies outside the trailer for a while, and finally retired to update the blog and get some sleep.
Tomorrow is "moving day", something the kitties don't really like much. We're going into the Eastern Time Zone, to Taylorsville Lake State Park, in Kentucky.
Roughly 350 miles.