An Elephant (Rock) Safari

We've just returned home from 10 days in Missouri.  It was a pretty busy visit but we did manage one day with the kids.

The weather was beautiful so we decided to head south to Elephant Rocks State Park (https://mostateparks.com/park/elephant-rocks-state-park )

We took the left trail which is known as the "Braille Trail" because of the braille markers along a paved pathway.

Climbing up the granite boulders burned off a lot of young energy!

Some energy took longer to burn off than others...

The back part of this section is an old quarry with the blasted out stone and chips leftover when it closed.

It was a perfect day for finding wildflowers to photograph.

An oak tree with new leaves and sneezy-wheezy pollen filled flowers

Little Bird and some tree fungus.

There are many types of lichen growing on the granite stones.

The kids loved them.

We had them bring their iPads to take photos and videos of what they saw.

This fence lizard was a rock star with his paparazzi.

What an interesting trunk on this oak tree!

The quarry pond.

A budding Spielberg working on his video.

Photo op!

We all had a great time and will come back to do the right trail this fall (when the weather isn't melting).