6-12-17

Last night we slept without the rainfly on our tent. Three panels of mesh open to the sky. The evening cooled off and by 9:30 we lay down on our cots and the stars began to come out of hiding. One by one they appeared in the sky. Each of us pointing when we saw a new one. And then like magic there were too many to name and I began to have a sense of smallness and of gratitude for this trip. Lorelei wondered aloud at the idea that we were looking up at a star and that possibly one of those had some other creature laying down looking at their night sky looking back at our star shining in their sky. 

I fell into a peaceful sleep waking only a few times in the night to change positions. This morning the birds were singing at 5:30 and the crows sounded the alarm after the woodpeckers had leant their tune to the morning music. The sky was bright long before the sun sparkled through the trees. I rose at 6:45 to shower and left Lorelei snoozing comfortably wrapped in her sleeping bag. 

We packed up camp early and sat at the picnic table eating breakfast and completing Lorelei's junior ranger book but the early morning bugs would simply not leave us alone so we hopped in the car and visited the river and saw fish and tadpoles enjoying the warming sun in the shallows. Then we drove to see where the cave entrance was. We couldn't buy cave tour tickets until 9:30 but we stopped in to the ranger station to get the junior ranger badge and found that there was another one she could do for cave exploration so we took that to the car and she finished it just in time to buy our cave tour tickets. We then wasted another 30 minutes adjusting our route for the next few days. We are not using GPS at all on this trip. Everything is done by using an Atlas and following road signs. Lorelei is becoming an excellent navigator. 

Ranger Courtney met us at the hike entrance and we were the only two people so we got nearly a two hour private tour and we got to see the very back of the cave where there is a little waterfall. She answered all of our questions and it was a really cool experience. 

After the tour we made some sandwiches and headed down the highway towards Springfield, MO and Wilson's Creek Battlefield, stopping only long enough to get gas. You don't think of Missouri as being a place where the civil war happened but the feelings and fighting were as fierce here as in any southern state. A park movie, a battlefield tour and a junior ranger badge in hand, we headed to our campground. We setup camp, made a great dinner of pasta and chicken and took a dip in the pool to cool off.