“The joy of living is his who has the heart to demand it.” — Teddy Roosevelt
Roaring River State Park
Missouri’s Roaring River wasn’t roaring when Maggie and I visited. — Photo by Pat Bean
Finding Oklahoma state parks to be my kind of place, I wondered if Missouri parks would be, too. I decided to find out on my way to St. Louis, even if it meant doubling the distance I had to travel to get there.
I considered the extra miles well worth it when I pulled into Roaring River State Park, where I had a fantastic site that backed up to a tiny creek. Maggie and I also had our choice of several trails to hike. I chose the Pibern Trail, a narrow path that meandered in a loop through trees and thick vegetation for about a mile and a half. About halfway along our hike, I spotted my first Louisiana waterthrush, a small bird with a streaky breast and a prominent white eyebrow.
A patch of yellow flowers brightened the view near my RV site at Missouri’s Roaring River State Park. — Photo by Pat Bean
But early the next morning, when Maggie and I went looking for the “roaring river,” what we found instead was a purring stream whose banks were dotted with fly fishermen hoping to snag a trout.
We strolled beside it for a while, then made a visit to the park’s nature center, where two young boys were oohing and aahing over the bugs and snakes on exhibit there. I didn’t stay long. I was still recovering from my too-close encounter with an Ozark critter that found me during the Pibern Trail hike.
Both Maggie and I had each returned to the RV with a tick. Hers was dead already, I assumed from her monthly flea and tick killer application. Mine, however, was alive and sucking blood from my lower leg. It was the last time I went hiking in the Ozarks without a liberal dose of insect repellant on my body.
Book Report: Two days lost because the new keyboard for my #@%$** computer, which was only a little over a year old but which had given me problems almost from the day I bought it, didn’t fix the problem. The tech said it was probably the mother board. I’d had it!!!! I wasn’t going to put a single penny into that piece of manure, an HP DV7 just in case anyone is interested, that I had come to hate. I bit the bullet and bought a new laptop, my first non HP one. It’s a Toshiba Satellite. I spent the past two days playing with it. But it was back to business this morning, and I added another 2,000 rewritten words to my travel book. That seems to be my daily output when I don’t goof off.
Bean’s Pat: Every Day Wisdom http://tinyurl.com/96rkgw3 Advice I truly try to follow.
Pat Bean's blog 