Was this a bucket list item?

Can I now say my life is complete (or close to it)? We had lunch at U.P. Chuck's bar in Kenton yesterday. We drive by the place all the time but it's usually not at a time of day when we're thinking about lunch. And even if it is the right time of day to be thinking about food, let's be honest. An establishment that features a drawing of someone upchucking on its tee-shirts doesn't strike me as being a place I'm real keen to patronize. But curiosity and hunger finally won out, so we pulled into the parking area alongside the building.

Note to anyone else who might contemplate stopping there: if you're driving a car, be careful when you park. The drop from the pavement on Federal Forest Highway 16 to the parking spaces is an abrupt one. You might not notice it in a truck, but in my little Ford Focus it felt and sounded like we'd just driven over a curb.

U.P. Chuck's is a typical small town bar. You kind of feel like you're stepping into a smoke-filled room even though smoking hasn't been allowed indoors in bars and restaurants in quite a few years in Michigan. I'm not sure what the building's original function 100+ years ago, but it's been a bar/restaurant/hotel as long as I can remember. The only thing that's changed on the exterior in the past 50 years is the name. There have been some updates to the interior: a new bar and tables in the past decade or so, but that's about it. The interior space was smaller than I expected -- the building is a decent size, but the actual main bar room doesn't take up much of the first floor. There is more space off to one side, but it looked like it didn't get much use, at least not in the summer. The lights were off and I got a vague impression of chairs stacked on tables. No doubt things get a lot busier during hunting and snowmobiling seasons. Most of the reviews on Yelp are from people who found it while hunting or sledding, although the place does get some summer tourists.

The menus we got handed were really short: just basic bar food like hamburgers, a couple of other types of sandwiches, a variety of deep fried snacks (the usual mozzarella sticks, mushrooms, zucchini, pickles, and whatever else Sysco sells breaded in humongous plastic bags), and pizza. This was a really good sign in place that had exactly one person working. I tend to get really suspicious when a small eatery has an elaborate menu -- that's a sure sign everything is coming off the Sysco truck pre-cooked and just gets microwaved in the kitchen.

Anyway, the S.O. ordered a Reuben and I got a cheeseburger -- a basic cheeseburger or hamburger is the test item I tend to order if we're eating someplace I've never been before. I figure if a place can make a decent hamburger, it's probably worth a return visit. So where did U.P. Chuck's fall on the decent burger scale? Kind in the middle. The burger was a decent size and it was cooked right -- sufficiently well-done that a person doesn't have to feel paranoid about E. coli or other food-borne illnesses but not so well-done that it's bone dry and bearing strong resemblance to a hockey puck. Normally it would fall into the really good category, but there was something ever so slightly off about the taste, like maybe the grill hadn't been kept as clean as it should be or the meat was hitting the end of its useful shelf life. Or maybe the cook decided to sprinkle on some seasoning I'm not used to tasting on burgers. Who knows? If I was a mustard user or had raw onions on the burger, that slightly off taste was subtle enough that I probably wouldn't have noticed it. Was it enough to keep me from eating there again? Nope, whatever the taste was it's been more than 24 hours and I haven't started upchucking. Still, the next time we stop there it'll be to try the pizza.

Downside to U.P. Chuck's: a couple moronic anti-Obama posters on one of the bulletin boards. I have a hunch this would be a good place to not talk politics because odds are Trump fans drink there.  

Like a lot of local establishments, there are framed photos (or photocopies of photos) of historic scenes hanging on the walls. Kenton used to be a good-sized town, thanks to a sawmill operating there. It was never a huge city, but it covered several blocks with businesses and houses. The main street had two-story commercial buildings for at least a block on both sides of the road; the town itself was big enough that it even had a wrong side of the tracks neighborhood, Finn Town. Finns were at the bottom of the social ladder back in the 1890s -- recent immigrants who spoke a stranger than usual language and practiced odd customs (e.g., sauna) -- so tended to end up clumped in the crappier housing. The photo above shows the main street in about 1910. I have no idea which one of those buildings is the current U.P. Chuck's (it might be the 5th one back on the left), but I do know that none of the other two-story structures have survived. And, considering how naked the hill in the background looks (that's a pretty thin line of trees) I think I know why Kenton faded into obscurity -- it's hard to keep a mill going once all the trees are gone.

Additional tourist information: there is a rustic (basic) US Forest Service Campground about 3 miles from Kenton, the Sparrow Rapids Campground. It has six sites and is free.There's also a nice wayside/picnic area on the north side of M-28 close to where the highway intersects with FFH-16.

Pulitzer Project: The Goldfinch

This one was an accident. Loyal readers (all two of you) know that I can be more than a tad obsessive about some things, including doing the Pulitzer fiction winners in chronological order. I started with the first winner (which, if memory serves, stank) and over the past 7 years or so have been slowly  working my way up the list. I'd actually gotten to 1969 when the ability to indulge in Interlibrary Loan vanished for a few months -- the L'Anse Public Library only has ILL during the school year. I figured the next Pulitzer winner I'd read wouldn't be available ntil sometime in September.

Then I pulled The Goldfinch off the shelf as part of my normal every-other-week trip to the library, recalled a friend had enthused about it a year or two ago, checked it out, eventually started reading it, and then found out it was a recent winner. My reaction was. . . oh, maybe a tad peeved at myself? I'd screwed up the nice neat order I was doing things in. I'm not supposed to skip around; it breaks my self-imposed rules. I consoled myself with the fact it was an accident -- there was nothing on the cover that would have warned me, and I hadn't looked at the list in awhile so how was I supposed to know?

So what exactly is The Goldfinch? For starters, it's really fat. This is not a book you pick up to skim on the bus on the way to work or to zip through on a weekend. It quite possibly is what might be termed a beach book, something you tote with you when you're looking forward to having a bunch of unstructured time to just kick back and read and not worry about how long it's taking you to get through it. It is a book with heft. In case of a home invasion, it could serve as a defensive weapon. It would also make a nifty doorstop.

It is also quite readable. Donna Tartt can write. She manages to wax almost lyrical when describing the trash floating in the canals in Amsterdam and the sand blowing through the decaying unfinished suburban housing developments in Las Vegas. If someone had told me someone could make descriptions of teenage druggies puking into trash cans readable, I wouldn't have believed it but Tartt pulls it off. How believable the scenarios are is another question -- I know adults can be pretty oblivious to the deviant behavior adolescents indulge in, but I find it hard to believe any two high school kids could show up at school day after day so stoned on alcohol and pills that it's a minor miracle they can walk. It's a rather implausible scenario. Then again, at that point the kid is going to school in Las Vegas so who knows? Maybe compared to his cohort, his behavior would have seemed pretty mainstream.

The Goldfinch is a coming of age story, sort of. The narrator is 13 when the book opens, mid-20s when it ends. It's his perspective on what's happened in his life since the day his mother died. It's been compared to Catcher in the Rye, but it's been so many years since I read that book that I have no idea if it's a valid comparison. I do seem to recall that Holden Caulfield didn't spend his time curled up in a fetal position from post traumatic stress while self-medicating like crazy and wallowing in paranoid fantasies, so I'm doubtful that the books actually have much in common. My memory of Holden is that he was pretty defiant; in contrast Theo (aka "Potter") spends a lot of time huddling under the bedclothes (metaphorically speaking) and having paranoid fantasies about being hauled off to prison in chains. He's pretty much a prisoner of his own fears.

The narrator in The Goldfinch, Theo Decker, is one of the oddest mixes of character traits I've seen in a long time. He's academically gifted, definitely book-smart, but remarkably naive when it comes to people. It doesn't help that with his own age group he has the social skills of a rock. Adults like him; his peers tolerate or bully him. When the book opens he apparently has only one friend, a sociopathic rich kid with a bad case of kleptomania, who drops Theo like the proverbial hot potato after Theo's mother dies. Theo also suffers from full-blown, total PTSD after surviving a bombing (vaguely ascribed to domestic terrorism) along with all the usual adolescent angst. The kid has one of the most wretched lives imaginable, loses his mother in the bombing, gets stuck living with his amoral alcoholic, drug-abusing con man of a father, and ends up living in a Las Vegas suburb that bears a strong resemblance to a ghost town. And it goes downhill from there. One horrible thing after another happens to Theo until he finds himself burning up with fever and freaking out from drug withdrawal in an Amsterdam hotel room. Then the author waves her magic wand, and, bingo, suddenly the thing that's terrified him for 13 years is no longer an issue. Even better, he's suddenly wallowing in huge amounts of money. To say this particular plot twist felt like cheating is an understatement. 

Maybe it wouldn't have felt so much like cheating if some of the horrible stuff that happened to Theo hadn't been his own fault. True, he was sadly orphaned in his teens and he did wind up drug-addicted, but that didn't automatically entail him to decide as an adult to sell fake antiques to gullible wealthy clients. The last chapter or so of the book really had me going, "That's it? All that weirdness and suddenly Theo gets a happily ever after? WTF?!" It felt contrived, formulaic, trite, you name it. It just didn't ring true. Then again, the same thing could be said of the whole book. . . so maybe it wasn't cheating after all; it was just the author doing an, "Oh, crap, I'm 650 pages into this sucker and no logical end in sight. Time to wrap it all up so my editor will stop harassing me about missed deadlines."

Bottom line: The Goldfinch is readable but odd. Tartt is sufficiently skilled as a wordsmith that the book flows smoothly; it's just a shame that when you hit the end you find yourself thinking she could have done it better with a lot less prose and some good illustrations. It feels like a graphic novel or the plot line for a not-very-good movie. You know, if it had actually been a movie and I'd paid to see it in a theater, I'd have walked out thinking, "Crap. Should have waited for it to be on Netflix." Except I'm not sure there's a Netflix equivalent for books -- does Reader's Digest still do condensed books?

Which I guess answers the question would I recommend this book to other readers? Not really. Once you start, the writing is sufficiently skilled that you get sucked into it, but in the end you just feel like you've wasted way too many hours of your life on a not very good book.

Next up with the Pulitzers: supposedly it'll be House Made of Dawn by Scott Momaby but having messed with the natural order of things with The Goldfinch, who knows?

More stuff I never thought I'd need to learn

How to do payroll.

A few months ago the historical society submitted a proposal to the Michigan Council for the Humanities for a local history project, although it's actually more of an ethnographic, anthropological type project. We said we wanted to collect oral histories that focused on the emergence of Indian gaming and the impact of Indian gaming (i.e., casinos) on the local area. We thought Big, which is what I always  do when writing grant applications. Ask for the maximum and hope you get a small piece of it.

I didn't think we actually had a prayer of being given the money. To be honest, I was sure our proposal did not meet SMART* criteria. I had no clue how we'd operationalize the thesis, assuming we even had a thesis, which I'm not sure we do. To me it all seemed remarkably vague. But, what the heck, doing proposals, even ones you don't think will get funded, is good practice.

A few days ago we received an email. Holy wah. The proposal was approved, and not just approved but approved for the full amount they were willing to give: $25,000. This is definitely a case of "be careful what you wish for." We're being handed a sizable chunk of change, all of which I'm going to end up having to track. I'm the Society's treasurer; ergo, I'm the Fiscal Officer for this grant. And unlike other grants we've received that mostly went for paying for stuff, this grant is going to spent on services: the person who does the interviews, the videographer standing (or sitting) close by with the camera, the person who transcribes tapes into pdfs, and so on. You know, people who just might end up on payrolls. People who will (and it pains me to type this) need to have taxes withheld from their wages. Social Security, Medicare, federal income, state income. . . it's not a happy thought.

I spent several hours today wandering around the Internal Revenue and State of Michigan websites feeling my eyes glaze over as I read page after page of bureaucratese and studying various forms trying to figure out what does or does not apply to the Historical Society. Part of me (a big part of me) is hoping that everyone who gets paid for their work on this project will opt to consider themselves independent contractors and let us weasel by with just giving them 1099s. I do know this is one grant where we're going to have to account for every penny spent -- the word "audit" pops up a lot in the information that accompanied the "Congratulations!" email. I tend to be remarkably anal about tracking the museum's money now so the actual documenting the money being spent shouldn't be difficult. I'm just not too thrilled with learning how to do the paperwork.

As for why we're focusing on the topic of Indian gaming, it's because Indian casinos were sort of born here in Baraga County. The case that always gets cited is California v. Cabazon, but an earlier case in which the United States government sued a member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community for illegally operating a casino laid the groundwork for Indian gaming nation-wide. In US v Dakota, the courts decided that an individual tribal member could not own or operate a casino, but a tribe as whole had rights individuals did not. Ergo, a tribal-owned casino might be legal. End result 30 years later? A multi-million dollar business and some really interesting history that needs to get documented before everyone who was there at the beginning is dead.

*Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely

Thought for the day

Divots, divots everywhere

I decided it was time to get serious about attacking the Canadian thistles growing in the yard. So I dug out the Claw from the gardening shed.

I tend to think of the Claw as a miracle tool. It does an amazing job of ripping weeds out of the lawn. The downside, of course, is that it leaves a noticeable hole behind.  Now multiply that hole by a gazillion. I knew there were thistles in the yard. I didn't realize just how many there were, though, until I got serious about ripping them out. Big chunks of the yard are now looking like they were attacked by a really bad golfer.

I'm not actually sure why I do worry about ripping out the thistles. They're the only weed that doesn't make the cut for being ignored. We've never been the type of people who lust after a patch of grass that looks a lot like a putting green. When it comes to the lawn, such as it is, everything that's not a thistle -- creeping charlie, dog tooth violets, dandelions, you name it -- gets left alone under the rationale of "Who cares if some people think it's a weed, it's green so it's better than bare dirt." I even ignore the burdock that keeps wanting to pop up next to the front porch.

Then again, burdock and dandelions are edible. Thistles are just annoying. So I'll keep ripping them out. Although I am wondering just wondering how many cubic yards of fill dirt I'm going to need to patch those divots.

One thing always leads to another

Now that the weather has warmed up and conditions are halfway decent outside, the S.O. has begun working on the Guppy. We'd noticed that when we had to rely on the fresh water tank in the Guppy that the water pump didn't seem to have much oomph. There'd be a quick burst of water and then things would slow to a trickle. It occurred to us that perhaps the pump was original equipment and was just plain wore out. The S.O. also raised the possibility that perhaps various screens and filters had become clogged with sand and other grit.

First step in testing that thesis was the easiest: unscrew the screen on the kitchen faucet. Sure enough. Lots and lots of crud. That helped a bit with that particular faucet, but not much in the larger scheme of things. So we took the bed apart. First we exposed the pump. Well, the date of manufacture is close to 20 years ago so, yep, maybe it is worn out and needs to be replaced. Still, the S.O. figured he should check the various filters and screens in the system, too. And then he exposed the water tank.

We're now kind of wishing he hadn't. The tank is translucent so we can clearly see the really nasty dark band going around the inside of it a couple inches from the top. Really makes a person wonder what caused that staining -- did a previous owner leave the same water sitting in the tank for so many years that it grew algae? Is it mold? Mud? Some other disgusting possibility I'd rather not imagine? Who knows. . . in any case, the S.O. removed the tank and is going to rinse it out thoroughly with a bleach solution. I'm not sure why. After all, we've been using water that's been run through that tank for the past two years and we're not dead yet. I guess it's psychological -- having seen the mystery scuzz, it'll be easier to live with that tank if we know it's been sterilized.

We have priced new water pumps. We're probably going to order one online. We checked replacement pumps at an RV dealer's recently and discovered that at this time of the year their prices are astronomical. No surprise there. It is the start of the U.P. camping season so it's understandable that merchants would want to get as much as the market can bear for various parts. I have no doubt that 10 or 15 years ago we'd have just sucked it up and paid the asking price. Not anymore.

I am hoping we get the Guppy put back together soon. We have a couple sort of local expeditions planned for this summer. We could probably manage just fine without running water in the Guppy, but I'd rather not. 

Our amble home

After leaving Farmington earlier this month, we took our time getting home. The weather was decent so we took a slightly more circuitous route than usual: up into Illinois, then northwest to Iowa and southern Wisconsin. I wanted to visit Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa and do so some other touristy things in the general area of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

We had noticed before that all roads in Illinois seem to lead to Peoria (at least if you're on I-39 or I-55) and that's where we wound up for one night, Peoria. Or, more precisely,  Jubilee College State Park, which is spitting distance from Peoria. We were, in fact, so close to the city that we experienced something relatively unusual for Adventures with the Guppy: over-the-air television. We cranked the antenna up and discovered we had a choice of multiple channels. I know a person isn't supposed to be thinking about television when one is camping, but, hey, it was Wednesday and it was nice to be able to watch "Survivor" when it aired instead of having to stream it multiple days after the fact.

Anyway, Jubilee College State Park struck me as being a nice park that's suffering from Illinois's budget woes. It's been neglected and it shows. The campground loops were nicely designed but maintenance has been sparse. The campground host told us that for a couple seasons the park had only one employee, a maintenance technician, who had to try to do everything alone. Staff has apparently increased since then -- there's now a superintendent in addition to the maintenance guy -- but not enough to keep up with everything. We got a discount on the normal camping fee because the showerhouse was closed, probably indefinitely. One of the camping loops is also closed. On the plus side, the areas that are open were clean, as were the vault toilets. They may be short-staffed, but whoever is working is working hard.

Despite the drawbacks, the host told us the campground is quite popular and does fill on the weekends in the summer. It also gets a fair number of campers from outside Illinois almost any day of the week because it's easily accessible from I-80. People who are doing longer trips, like from the East Coast out to Yellowstone or farther, find it convenient for a one-night stop. Heck, that's what we were doing -- stopping for one night while on our way to someplace else. It is far enough from the Interstate that the campground is quiet but not so far that you feel like it's going to take you forever to get back to the highway in the morning.

The only quibble I'd actually have about staying at Jubilee College SP again is that it could be tricky finding a good spot to park a motorhome if the park is busy. We got lucky -- it was the middle of the week so there were only a handful of other campers there -- and were able to snag a site so level we didn't have to worry about jacks or other levelers. However, a fair number of sites had a definite slope and could have proved interesting. In addition, the majority of the sites were not graveled, i.e., they were just plain turf -- you get to guess where the "pad" is by the location of the electrical post and faint ruts in the grass -- and several were definitely muddy. The online description of the park says the sites are graveled, so maybe they all were at one time, but the gravel hasn't been renewed in  a long, lone time. The site we snagged did have real gravel on it so we had no fears of getting bogged down; that wasn't true of a number of others we looked at and rejected. If you're driving a leviathan or have a humongous fifth wheel trailer, it could be tricky getting your landing gear down without them sinking clear out of sight.

The closed showerhouse is visible in the distance. There's a large, open area near the playground. This has to be a great park for families -- lots of room for the little barracudas to run around, start spontaneous soccer or baseball games, and generally burn off pent up energy.

The State of Illinois park system does have an online reservation system for its campgrounds; it's through a private contractor (ReserveAmerica) and I was not impressed. It will show you a map of the campground, but individual site descriptions were basically nonexistent as were photos. Given that a number of states have really nice websites that include information like whether or not a site slopes, has any shade, and even have photographs of the specific sites, I'd say ReserveAmerica has a ways to go in bringing its database into the 21st century. We did not make a reservation; we decided that it was early enough in the camping season that we shouldn't have a problem finding a site. We were right.

Factoid: Jubilee College State Park is named after Jubilee College, a historic college founded in the 19th century. Jubilee College State Historic Site is adjacent to the park.

From Peoria we continued to amble west and north. Crossed the Mississippi at the Quad Cities, then took US-61 north to Dubuque, Iowa, where it crosses into Wisconsin. Eventually we found Wisconsin Highway 35 and followed the Great River Road to a few miles north of DeSoto to a Corps of Engineers site, Blackhawk Park, adjacent to the Mississippi. According to the online reviews, Blackhawk is popular. I believe it. It was early enough in the season that the reservation system hadn't kicked in yet -- all the sites were first come, first serve -- but I'd be willing to be that once it gets to be summer without a reservation you'd be out of luck on the weekends. There are a number of sites in the newer RV loop that are right next to the water so it's possible to beach your boat within a few feet of your trailer or motorhome. It doesn't get much better than that for people who like to fish. 

There are two camping loops for RVs and trailers as well as a plethora of basic sites for tent camping. I did notice about half a dozen tent campers; they were fairly widely dispersed. Of course, it was easy to avoid being right next to anyone else when the campground is really large and it's early in the season. As has been true of other Corps campgrounds we've patronized, the sites were large -- lots of space so you don't feel crowded -- and so close to level that we didn't bother worrying about the slight tilt to one side. If we had planned to be there for more than 2 nights, the S.O. would have gone through the hassle of putting planks under the wheels on the downhill side, but when the tilt was barely noticeable it wasn't worth the hassle. The RV sites all have electricity; the big difference between the newer loop and the older section is the older section has large shade trees. The new loop will have shade eventually, but the trees are still fairly small. 

About the only quibble I'd have about this particular campground was the fact the showers in the shower house required tokens. One token got you 5 minutes worth of water. Allow me to say that 5 minutes isn't very long if you're the first person into the shower house in the morning and it takes what seems like forever for the hot water to arrive. Maybe if it had been July an ice cold shower first thing in the morning would have been attractive, but not in early May. . . In any case, I had managed to talk the fee collectors into giving me a total of 4 tokens the night before -- 2 for me, 2 for the S.O. -- because we were going to be there for 2 nights. Each camper is allowed one token per day. I was glad I had more tokens with me than I theoretically needed -- the first 5 minutes ran out right about the same time that the water got hot enough for me to get the shampoo into the hair and the body wash on to the body. I would have been extremely unhappy to find myself covered with soap and token-less.

The campground is not on the main channel of the river. It's upstream of Lock & Dam No. 9 in a section where there are numerous islands. There are a couple of islands between the shipping channel and the section of campground where we were. The shipping channel is visible from the day use area, though, and it was kind of neat to see a tug pushing several barges go gliding by.

Factoid: Blackhawk Park gets its name from the fact it's near the site of the last battle of the Black Hawk Wars, the Bad Axe Massacre. I kind of wonder what the terrain was like back in 1832 because obviously there was a lot less land under water, but it still must have been a lousy choice as a place to fight a battle. The bluffs on either side of the river are practically vertical, and the land within the flood plain had to have been thoroughly laced with marshes and sloughs. In any case, the Native Americans lost, and lost spectacularly, hence the reference to a massacre.

We may find ourselves back at Blackhawk Park one of these years. We had planned on only 2 nights there and it turned out that wasn't enough time to do everything I would have liked to. We did get to Effigy Mounds, but never made it to Villa Louis, a Wisconsin State Historic Site, and some other places in that general area. I was really tempted to extend our stay, but for various reasons we had to get home. Oh well. Live and learn. I should know by now to always allow the double the time I think something is going to take. Doesn't matter if it's a do-it-yourself project or just playing tourist, everything always takes longer than you had planned for it.

Addition to Your Tax Dollars at Work

The Younger Daughter has been promoted and is moving on from Missouri; hence, an addition to the Your Tax Dollars at Work list. In about a week she's heading off to Arizona to do whatever it is that archeologists do on the Coronado National Forest.

I'm kind of wondering just how much forest there can be when all the photos I've seen from that part of Arizona feature a lot of rock, bare dirt, and cholla cactus, but who knows? I have a vague recollection of there being trees up in the mountains when we lived in Tucson several decades ago. I guess I'll find out next fall when we head that way with the Guppy. We now have the perfect excuse to be snowbirds -- a relative who lives in Arizona. If the kid is smart, she'll make sure to find a place to live that does not include RV parking.

Hickory Canyons Natural Area

One of the cooler things about the state of Missouri is (are?) the various Natural Areas managed by the Department of Conservation. I've already described one popular area near Farmington, Pickle Spring. On our last Sunday in Farmington, the Younger Daughter and I decided to go for a hike at another area, Hickory Canyons, that is also near Farmington but not quite as popular. Its parking area is a lot smaller and it lacks the one amenity (a single picnic table) Pickle Spring has. When we arrived, there were two other cars there. One was occupied by a family that was just leaving; we never did see the occupants of the other vehicle.

The usual rock with a plaque honoring whoever donated the land for a conservation area

Hickory Canyons has two hiking trails, one on either side of the road. One is fairly short and leads to a waterfall. The other does a loop approximately a mile long. It descends down through one short canyon, parallels a stream for a ways, and then ascends back up to the trailhead through another canyon.

 It was a nice walk. There's a fair amount of variety in what you see -- vegetation, rock formations, whatever -- and in the trail itself that it's not boring. I'd describe the level of difficulty as moderate: there are sections where you're dealing with tree roots, steep slopes, loose rock, etc. There are also a couple of water crossings. Nothing too tricky or hard, but definitely still terrain where you have to pay attention to where you're putting your feet. I was glad I had a hiking staff along to help compensate for the fact my depth perception tends to be erratic.

The website for Hickory Canyons describes it as having an unusually high variety of ferns and mosses packed into a fairly small geographic area. I wouldn't know. I did notice ferns popping up here and there, but to me one fern looks pretty much like another. I'm more inclined to notice wild flowers, shrubs, and trees.

Like in the photo above.The shelf above the cave opening definitely had ferns on it. What variety were they? I have no clue. I can say with some certainty, however, that the pink stuff is a wild azalea bush in bloom.

As usual for any park anywhere, people had ignored the warning signs and wandered off trail. There were several spots where social trails had developed from people deciding they'd rather short cut straight down (or up) a hill instead of sticking to the switchbacks. I've never been able to figure that one out. If you've decided you're going to hike a trail that you know up front is a one-mile loop, why try to make it shorter? What's the point? More proof, I guess, that way too many people are idiots.

Besides the azaleas (and there were a lot of them), the other thing I noticed a fair number of were the jack-in-the-pulpits. I had trouble getting down to their level, though. Once it gets to be Spring in Missouri, I'm not real inclined to lie on the ground with the ticks and chiggers just to ensure having a better angle for photographing wild flowers.

It may not be as busy as Pickle Spring, but the trail is well worn enough that you can tell the area is popular.

 I am kind of wishing we had discovered that some Missouri Department of Conservation Natural Areas had hiking trails a little sooner in our journeys to the state. I'm sure there were others relatively close to where we were that we would have enjoyed, too. If we end up campground hosting anywhere in Missouri again, I'll have to do some research to see what might be available in whatever region we happen to be in.

Yard art

Every time we drove past this particular house in Farmington, Missouri, I'd mutter "We need to take a picture." Well, our most recent visit to Farmington was probably also our last trip to Farmington -- the Younger Daughter has been promoted and is transferring to a national forest in a different state -- so I decided it was time to stop talking about it and actually got the camera out.