Saturday, May 28, 2016
WOW! It is not raining today. First day in 5 days. We plan to take a hike then get to the museum at Top of the Rock we missed on Monday due to rain.
We started our 3.2 mile hike at the Showboat Branson Belle parking lot. There is a paved trail that goes to the Table Rock State Park Marina.
Both the picture above and below show some pretty flower beds on the path down to the Showboat Branson Belle.
Then we came across a "duck" crossing. There should have been a sign "Duck Crossing". Below see the "duck" coming right for us?
It is about to get us!
Hee Hee
As we walked farther down the trail, we saw one of these starting to cross the lake.
Sure looks unstable to us. Neither of us has any desire to ever ride in one of those.
Most of the trail looked like this. It was a very pleasant walk with just a little up hill and down hill. There was shade on most of it, which was nice since it got up to 88 degrees and probably 70% humidity.
We made it to the main entrance to the marina.
This flower bed and the one below are on the way to the entrance to the main part of the marina.
One could rent these little boats. However they are glorified peddle boats. We did not want to work that hard. It was 1.6 miles to the marina and 1.6 miles back.
We saw several kinds of birds on our walk. There was a flock of Canadian geese in the grassy area.
We saw this pretty little bird. His whole back was the same blue as his head. We probably should invest in a bird book since we seem to enjoying seeing them so much.
We saw cardinals flying around. Tic managed to catch this female, but the male eluded us.
When we were over half way back, we saw the Showboat Branson Belle leaving for its dinner cruise. I look forward to our cruise. Hopefully we can cruise when it is not raining.
Next we are headed to the museum at the Top of the Rock. That will be a separate post.
Friday, May 27, 2016
It has been raining for most of the day for 3 days now. About 3:30pm this afternoon, it was not raining and we decided to take a drive. Of course, it is still an overcast day.
This is MO-465 on the north side of Branson. It shows how hilly and lush it is all around here. We have not experienced so much humidity in a long time. My hair is even curly. Hee Hee
We decided to go visit the Dewey Short Table Rock Corp of Engineers Visitor Center. It was very informative about the area before the dam was built and the building of the dam. Table Rock Lake is an artificial lake or reservoir in The Ozarks of
southwestern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas. The lake is impounded
by Table Rock Dam constructed in 1954-1958 on the White River by the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Isn't this a huge lake?!?! And downstream is another huge lake, Bull Shoals, also on the white River.
This, obviously, is the lake side of the dam. You can see how overcast it is, yet the winds are very calm.
The grounds around the Visitors Center and Main Office were beautiful. Below are pictures of a tree and several types of flowers around.
This is a Smoke Tree. Interesting name and beautiful color.
We walked out on a boat dock just in time to see the Showboat Branson Belle come by. We plan to have dinner and see the show one day next week. Looking forward to it!
We drove to the river side of the dam. Impressive.
I'm standing at the top of the hill with the White River on the other side of me.
We found a road that took us down to the river's edge.
The humidity is high, the air temperature is much warmer than the water temperature, so fog is building on the river. As you can tell, we are looking back at the dam.
This is looking away from the dam. You can see the fog is starting to form this direction also.
In both directions, look how much thicker the fog is in just minutes. See the above picture and below picture.
There are several hikes around the White River. They all start here. We will have to come back and hike on a non-rainy day.
We hear lots of birds but cannot see any. However, Tic was able to catch this grey squirrel.
We were glad to get out for a little bit this afternoon. The forecast is for clearing tomorrow (Saturday) and sunny on Sunday. Maybe we will hike tomorrow.
Tuesday, May 23, 2016
Grocery shopping is first on the list today. On the way home from grocery shopping we saw this abandoned neighborhood.
The name of the area is Indian Ridge as shown on this huge rock.
The following 3 pictures show huge houses partially built and abandoned.
Look at the size. These don't even have windows in them nor any siding. The grey color is the discoloration of the plywood.
This is the view you see from the highway. Think of all the money thrown away.
The forecast for the day said possible rain, however, it doesn't look like it will rain for a while yet. So we decided to go to Top of the Rock and take a 2.5 mile guided hike.
It is possible to rent a golf cart and drive the 2.5 miles, but we wanted the exercise.
This is the fireplace inside the building. This is quite a place.
It turns out we walked the golf cart path. Here we go!!
The whole trail was beautiful waterfalls, rock formations and awesome views. I'm just going to put the pictures in with comments below only a few.
Cool view of the table rocks.
This is inside a cave. In the center back of this picture is a 4 story cascading water fall. It is hard to see. There is a pool of water in the foreground that is glassy smooth so reflections are sharp.
This is looking up inside the cave. Cool pic!
This is one of 2 or 3 bridges built by the local Amish for the park. Below is inside the bridge as Dusty and our guide walk across.
Beautiful video of this part of the waterfall.
We were surprised by the number of beautiful waterfalls along our path.
We are headed up the final hill to the museum, gift shops and restaurants.
We were told this sink hole occurred during construction.
I forgot to mention they also have a golf course. It has a waterfall on it also. Look at all the sand traps.
The tee boxes are about the only flat areas on the course. Yikes!!!
This is the westward view from the Buffalo Bar. We had hoped to watch the sun set here, but it has started raining and you can see we will not see a sunset.
Below are several beautiful statues around.
You can tell it is raining.
There is also a chapel for weddings. It is open to be toured, but it was raining so hard, we declined the trek.
Isn't the chapel beautiful and set in an awesome place.
We got in over 15,000 steps today. Dusty is resting while we wait for the shuttle to take us to the welcome center where our Jeep is parked.
We were told that our museum tickets could be used on another day. We decided we would come back another day, so there will be another blog post on that.
