Talking Rocks Cavern then Atlatl Throwing

October 26, 2008
Talking Rocks Cavern, located off business hwy 13 in West Branson, is a wonderful cave. The cave was originally called Fairy Cave when Truman Powell’s daughters Hazel and Pansy delighted visitors nearly a century ago. At that time you repelled into the cave sitting on a small wooden log. Today you descend concrete steps, lots of them, that wind down amid a vast array of incredible formations.

We arrived for an early morning tour and Stephanie greeted us as we came into the office/store. She was delightful, friendly and her charm was refreshing so early in the day. Donnie was our guide; she is so knowledgeable. She shared stories and science with us. The tour takes you through the drapery of a flowstone formation! Donnie seemed to enjoy being in the cave as much as we did making the tour exciting and informative. This is a cave to see! http://www.talkingrockscavern.com/

Downstairs of the store is the basement cave, an educational area where students learn about biology, geology and hydrology of caves. Then we went for a hike on the nature trail, climbed the tower overlooking the oak tree forest.

Just north of Kimberly City we found our houseboat! What a beauty. A Southern Comfort by Stardust. Cliff you will have to show us how to put in a projection TV on the upper deck. Dreaming….

Ranger Cheyne at Roaring River State Park told us all about Atlatls, spear thrower, and we got to practice throwing. There is nothing natural about it; it was awkward, but the spear did go and with more speed. There is even an international society of Atlatls! http://www.internationalatlatlsociety.org/ We got another line on our application for Missouri Explorer; we still have two service projects to do to get our patch.

We went to Pineville, but the walmart was further south near the Arkansas border.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Houston Fest Galax, VA

Image
We arrived in Galax, VA and stopped at our friend, Harold's. He was just putting the finishing touches on a cake he made for his nephew.  Harold is great in the kitchen! Brenda arrived!  We had a nice meet and greet. We went to the school across the street with Brenda and Harold and met Linda who likes hugs. Each day the three of them and others from the community volunteer to prepare backpacks of food items for children who otherwise would good the weekend hungry. They have fund raisers to get money and purchase food items that children can manage for breakfast and lunch.  They also get donations.  There is a man in Florida that heard about their need for food so ships items from Amazon.com for them to distribute. They get everything organized then run an assembly line to package items. The bags are then sent to the classrooms where the teachers put them in the children's backpacks so that no one is called to any attention. Time to head to Houston Fest whose mission is to hon
Read more

Navy Buddies

Image
Today is a good day to drive! We drove across Amarillo, TX to visit with Will's Navy buddy, Ron.  We found him in the same park we had met him in about ten years ago. These two men met fifty years ago aboard The USS Platte.  ( Platte  made almost yearly deployments to the western  Pacific Ocean  from 1960 to 1968, including extensive operations in  Vietnamese  waters and refueling the  USS  Enterprise  (CVN-65)  task group off Korea during the  Pueblo incident . Platte served with the Pacific Fleet into 1970. She was sold for scrapping on 14 May 1971.)   Ron suggested La Fiesta Grande for an early dinner, a great Mexican place.  It was fun listening to the stories all starting with, "Do you remember...." We dropped Ron back off at home and met Don, a neighbor. See you again somewhere sometime, Ron. Okay, so check out these drinks that were delivered to the next table!
Read more

Our Own Palm Tree

Image
December 15, 2007 We woke parked at the Walmart; we have a nice spot we like way off to one side where we face a little lawn and have our own palm tree. Not many people park in this area because it is farther to walk into the store; at night a few other overnighters park in the lot, but they park up with the trucks so we pretty much have this area to ourselves. From there we drove to Victor Park, a community park with tennis courts, picnic area and fields for sports. The restrooms were locked, but no biggie as we have our own facilities. Will started up the generator and worked on a letter to the Chevy Guy in New Brunswick he has been formulating in his mind ever since we left Canada. The Roadtrek just stopped one day and we had to have it towed and lucky for us it was to a Chevy repair garage. We had our fuel tank fixed and they cut the fill tube. Roadtrek had designed a specialty one they didn’t have so they just jury rigged one. Fixed they said; we paid the bill of over a thousand d
Read more