Top of the Rock in Ridgedale, MO near Branson, MO

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.