More Adventures

It seems to me this evening, looking back on the day, like we've had enough adventures for at least three days. This morning Hardy and Judy picked us up at 8:30 a.m. to visit the Richard Clement Memorial Forest and Wildlife Area, where Hardy was going to place his first geocache. We picked up a map at the trailhead and hiked in. Hardy and Judy had been here earlier with a ranger and had picked out a spot by a wildlife pond to place the cache, a small camouflaged film canister.

The pond is home to an assortment of frogs, fish, dragonflies, butterflies, and other creatures. Some of the dragonflies looked as if their wings were jeweled. The cache will certainly be a challenging one to find, but the effort will be well rewarded by the opportunity to visit this little island of life. After a while we walked out to an open meadow designated as a food plot, full of wildflowers and butterflies. We saw fritillaries and swallowtails, among others. Hardy encouraged me to log my visit to the cache so I would be FTF (first to find). By the time I logged it this evening, someone else had already found it!

Hardy had a root canal scheduled for 1:00 p.m., so they dropped us off at home at 11:00 a.m. We scrubbed off to try to remove any unwelcome hitchhikers--like the tick I found clinging to the washcloth or the invisible chiggers that live in the grasses. After lunch, we drove into Rolla to meet our friends at the dentist's office. While waiting, we browsed a nearby bookstore, always a fun diversion.

Then we headed to St. James, a small town northeast of Rolla along I-44 to visit the St. James Winery. Hardy and Judy have visited this award-winning winery before and had some good suggestions of wines to try. We ended up buying both the Riesling and the Vignoles that they recommended. The friendly folks, free tasting, and wide selection of accessories made this a memorable winery to visit.

Next we drove to Maramec Spring park. The spring provided water power for iron works in the eighteen hundreds. The visitor center has lots of exhibits and working scale models showing the history. We walked around the spring and the adjacent trout raising pools. The spring has an average daily flow of around 100 million gallons and provides lots of water at 56 degrees, just right for raising fingerling trout to stock the state's lakes. We put our quarters in the dispenser and got fish food to feed the hungry fish, which flashed in the sunlight as they rose to take the food.

After walking around the self-guided trail, we were ready for dinner, so we drove to Sybill's in St. James. It's a 5 star restaurant in a Victorian style house, and definitely a dress up place, but they were very gracious in welcoming us despite our very casual dress. The food and service were spectacular. Ken and I shared the chicken caprese, described as "Grilled and topped with fresh tomato, caramelized red onion, homemade mozzarella and basil, drizzled with reduced balsamic vinegar." The house salad had blue cheese crumbles and bacon. The kitchen split the dish, which also came with green beans and garlic mashed potatoes. The only thing that was really split was the chicken, and the split charge was only $2. We were wowed.

By the time we got home, we were definitely tired. I headed to bed as soon as I could.