Rainy day bored Geri

The Scour Channel

Mother Nature's Dryer

Day 8 - The rain stopped in the middle of the night and I looked forward to moving on, but at dawn it began to drizzle again.  Optimistically, Geri & I emptied the tent of all our gear and carried it under the protection of the shelter, during a brief lull in the rain, with the anticipation that it would soon stop and we could pack up.  Before we had time to move the tent, it began to pour heavily and it never let up until close to 11:00 AM.  I asked a Park Ranger how much it rained and he said, "I can't tell you.  The raingauge only goes to 5 1/2 inches and it was overflowing."  When the rain finally stopped, we had to make a decision whether to stay another night or take our chances and move on.  With the forecast predicting more rain today, we decided to play it safe and stay another night, but we took advantage of the weather window and pedaled to the main part of the Park to visit it.  We hiked the 2.25 mile Shut-Ins Trail and part of the Ozark Trail.  It was exciting to see the high waters of the East Fork of the Black River from all the rain!  We also hiked the 2 mile Scour Trail to see the channel cut by 1.3 billion gallons of water from the Taum Sauk Reservoir when a dam broke on Dec. 14, 2005.  Lastly, we visited the beautiful new Visitors Center before returning to our camp.  The sun had come out and we took full advantage of the solar dryer to eliminate some of the water from our gear.  In addition, we have eaten all the food we have brought with us, since we never expected to be camping here for 3 nights!  We are lucky that a small Park store opens only Friday - Sunday and it's Friday!  If we had been here other days of the week I guess we would have been panhandling for food!!  We enjoyed dry weather the rest of the evening, but not the return of the bugs!