Butterflies and a cache

We picked this weekend to goto Queen Winhelmina State Park because it was predicted that the Monarch butterflies would be passing through on their way south for the winter.  We did see some butterflies, lots of bikes (both human powered and gas powered).  We hiked a couple of trails (bushwhacked to fetch the park cache (that's #47 of 52), rode our bikes, hung out at camp.

I bumped into a couple of Rolla grads at the bath house last night.  Emily and I were walking up (I was wearing a UMR sweatshirt) and a guy asks "are you an alum?".  We talked for a bit, turns out he (ME'08 and his wife ArchEng'08), also lived in the Quad.  Small world.

We'd planned on stopping by another park on the way home since it was "in the neighborhood" but Eli didn't sleep well last night so we opted to just head straight home.

Had to ask where the park sign was (different road than we came in on) and snagged a picture last night.  Glad I did because since we didn't goto the other park we didn't go out that way either.

If you squint you can see a butterfly.

Speckled King Snake, we watched him until he moved on along

Gorgeous views

And of course, sign #47.

Five more parks to go.  Since we're not whitewater boaters Cossatot will probably involve hiking a trail along the river.  We can hike from the visitor's center to the cache and back (it's about 4.5 miles each way), it'll be a long hike but quite doable with daypacks.

Daisy will probably be our campground when we go see it and Cossatot.

The 3 lakes (Catherine, DeGray, and Ouachita) will probably all be done together.  Stay at 1, enjoy 1, visit the other 2 as well.

If we'd been thinking further ahead, perhaps we would have used the 4 day weekend around Columbus Day but we have other plans Friday and Saturday night.

We're getting close, I'm looking forward to finishing up.