Sometime during the night it stopped raining hard and the day looked like it might actually clear up. the forecast had been for 100% chance of rain on Friday, 70% on Saturday and 40% on Sunday, but it looked like we might beat the odds this morning. I made it through the restless, cold night with a low of 37 degrees.
In the morning the water had gone down to just ankle level and it was running clear so you could see the bottom and made it easy for the rest of our group to cross. We were all assembled again and ready to go by 9 am.
The sun came out as we started and since it was a nice day I got a chance to notice more of the Missouri wildflowers that were on the trail today. The temperature has been so cool that they are behind, but despite the conditions this weekend, they were all over if you just looked.
The panoramas were more enjoyable when you could at least take off your rain gear. A view from the a Missouri ridge line
The trail was very touch and rocky today but did have several lovely spots as water was coming off of every rock and out of the ground everywhere.
We were suppose to cross the Black River at this point (below) Not going to happen. We needed to make a detour of about 3 miles through the Johnson Shut In State Park campground and visitors center and do a road walk to get around the Black River.
Once getting into the park and about 3 miles left in our day, we decided for a late lunch and used the general store for soda and ice cream- we felt like true "Thru Hikers"
Leaving Taum Sauk State Park required the road walk (above) to get over the Black River (below) by road bridge
The "Scour" (above) was caused by the Taum Sauk Dam, which was made of earthen material breaking a few years ago and letting one trillion gallons of water escape into the woods and shut-ins. it carved out (scoured out) this path of destruction. You can see the new very large concrete dam in on top of the hill.
The sun came out in the evening and the wind died down and allowed for a nice time to dry out gear and eat together-this was where we planned to be and we were back on schedule.
Day 2:
Hiked 14 miles total including park and road miles
total time 7 hours
