April 23, 2006

I have decided to keep this xanga as a log of my various adventures across the globe. My first entry pertains to a trip which my father, brother and I took down to Mark Twain National Forest. We started out hike on Friday at the Hercules Turnaround. There was a huge fire observation deck which Josh and I illegally climbed while dad scouted the trail-heads. We finally loaded on our packs and set off at about 4 in the afternoon and only went in about two miles before we found a great site with a fire ring and which was right next to a stream. We quickly set up camp and dad cooked us up some cheesy-noodle goodness. After dinner Josh and I took off walking down the stream for an hour or so and then headed back up to camp. That night we sat around a cedar fire and enjoyed its smell and bug repelling abilities. The next morning we woke to a slight rain but it was gone by the time we finished breakfast. (To all hikers- those chocolaty pop tarts are NO GOOD FOR ANYTHING!!) We took a day pack and wandered off in search of these water falls which we had heard would be neat. About a mile into our hike we found a really cool shelf which we explored a little before heading on. At one point we referred to our neat topo-maps (which were very impressive for being free trail head maps) and decided we had missed the falls and might find them if we just walked down stream. About an 1/8 of a mile on down there they were. Unfortunately they were all dried up but that did give Josh and I the opportunity to take off our shoes and jump into the pool and by jump in I mean, me jump in then Josh try to follow and slip and pull us both down under the water. After a while we geared back up and moseyed on down the trail. A few miles later we wandered across a small river which was overhung by a several hundred-foot-high cliff. We waded out to a rock in the middle of the stream and set up our lunch and basked in the glory of summer sausages and power bars. After that the map told us to go straight up the cliffs we had eaten under and while dad and I discussed what exactly that meant Josh had the idea to go back to the other side of the stream and sure enough there was a trail (albeit it looked more like a potty trail to me). We tramped up to the top where we encountered our first fellow back packer who said the bald nobs (for which we were looking) were only about 2 miles away. The trail through the area was so covered with leaves that it was hard to even really see. There were also lots of small sprouts still coming up right in the middle of the trail, congratulating us on being some of the first people through that area for the summer. Finally we found ourselves at the bottom of a field on a hill side. We schwacked up to the top and sat there and enjoyed the amazing landscape. Unfortunately, dad had begun feeling sick and so we decided to head on back and load up camp and head out that night instead of the next morning (as we had planned before). We broke camp down in about 20 minutes and Josh and I took off ahead of dad who said he rather to go slow. Once we were all loaded back up in the van I drove us home through a beautiful afternoon landscape which was complemented by a wonderful bluegrass program I found on NPR. All in all, it was a beautiful trip across some very old, very powerful lands with some pretty neat fellows.