Funmurphys: the Blog

Sleet, Ice, Snow Bury St. Louis

Yesterday we had rain that quickly changed to sleet in the morning. Last night it changed to freezing rain in a lot of areas, and then early this morning it changed back to snow. To the west, a lot of snow fell (16 inches in Columbia), and to the east, a lot more freezing rain fell. About 500,00 people in the St. Louis metro area were without power (including my parents in Kirkwood - thankfully they just called to tell me it was back on). It was, even by St. Louis standards, a freak storm. Beware of storms that track north and south - they pack a wallop. We've had thundersnow here before, but I think this is the first time we had thunderfreezing rain. Actually, we got so much rain at my house it all didn't freeze - part of my driveway was washed clean of snow and ice by all the runoff last night.

Yesterday I was sick at home with food poisoning; today I didn't go in after my wife and I watched our neighbor give up trying to get up the hill out of our subdivision. What a difference a day makes.

Since we didn't lose power here, I could admire the beauty, and took a break from shoveling my driveway to do so:

You can see my house and partly shoveled driveway. All of the tree branches are weighed down with snow and ice - one of them on the dogwood in my front yard snaped.

The view down my street -- I think it's pretty any season, but I don't get to see it this way too often (thankfully). They didn't plow here until mid-afternoon. My son spent the day sledding on a locally famous hill (no, not Art Hill - by locally, I mean locally. I spent the day shoveling, and visiting my parents.

My neighbors across the street lost several large limbs out of their silver maple (word of advice - never plant a soft maple). This one first landed on their roof before winding up in their driveway. They were happy Brian's truck wasn't parked there as it usually is. I think just about everybody had a tree that dropped a limb. On the way to my parents one street was closed, and another had a lane blocked by a huge limb that came down. We even saw a pin oak bent over double with the top in the street. A couple of doors up from my parents a tree limb pinned a power line leading to a neighbor's house.

I have to admit, it sure was a winter wonderland around here today. The bradford pear in this picture is missing a half due to this summer's freak summer storm that left half a million without power.

Shelley has several posts about the storm: Icicles, Again, one of the lucky ones, and Let's talk about the weather.

Gateway Pundit has a post, St. Louis gets slammed with ice.

And Jim Durbin has power but no propane.

A Walk In The Woods

We went for a hike a couple of weekends ago. The weather was perfect, sunny yet cool. We picked the perfect trail for the last great day of 2005 - the Al Foster trail which is actually cooperative endeavor with the city of Wildwood, the Department of Natural Resources, St. Louis County Parks, the Meramec River Recreation Association and The Great Rivers Greenway District. The end in Glencoe intertwines with the Wabash, Frisco and Pacific Railroad which is a miniature steam railroad that runs every Sunday afternoon May through October. The trial follows an abandoned railroad line along the Meramec river and thus is blessed with two great attributes - it's very flat, and its very scenic.

OK, as you can see from the photo, the flatness of the trail doesn't mean the scenery is flat.
Continue reading and viewing even more photos.

The sky was a gorgeous blue, the shade of blue it gets when the humidity is low, a shade you don't see too often in warm weather around here. The leaves hadn't started turning color yet. We were enveloped in green as we walked along, the miniature railroad to one side, the Meramec on the other. The trees arched overhead so that you walked in a tunnel.

But you weren't enclosed everywhere. A stretch of the trail runs through an open glade - the site of an old gravel operation on the river. The ground isn't dirt here, it's pea gravel. We were actually hot while walking under the open sun.

When we came to the end of the railroad, we made an inadvertent discovery: The road less traveled. Yep, it exists, and you can find it just off the Al Foster trail. But you better hurry, before it gets developed. It was pure luck we found it, because we decided to follow the train tracks through their turnaround Y instead of the path. When we came to the end of the track, we could see a trail leading off away from the main trail, and it looked like we'd have to jump a ditch to make it back to the main trail. So we decided to follow the other trail, the road less travelled and it made all the difference. We wondered at the presence of a paved road out here, but since the crown was leaf free, we figured we weren't the only people who had been on it recently. It followed a little creek that meandered its way to the Meramec.

After the hike I wondered at the road so much that I did a little research. It turns out we had come across the legendary Lawler Ford Road, AKA Zombie Lane. John Fischer, who oddly enough we met biking on the trail, my source for all things in this part of St. Louis County, knew of the road and told me that when he was a teenager the road was where you took your girlfriend to scare her so that she would - hey, this is a family blog!

Despite the name, or perhaps because it was daylight, we came across no zombies. Just more scenery, this time a forested valley.

So I took advantage of tools not available even a year ago, and so you can check out a map and satellite view of the road. Way cool. But the point is to notice how the road, which starts out on the map as Lawler Ford, and then changes to Quail Hollow Estates, is just a line on the satellite map, unlike the other roads, and has no houses along it, also unlike the other roads. I don't know when it was abandoned and closed off, but we hiked up to the point where we made another discovery: The end of the road. Two giant discoveries in one afternoon! It seems that sime time in the past the creek eroded the road, and must have washed out the bridge that used to cross it, leaving nothing behind but a concrete wall in the middle of the creek. Ok, we went a little past that point, but since it was obvious that we had long left the trail we wanted to be on, and had no idea where the creek led, we turned around and finished the Al Foster Trail. I leave you with a picture of the End of the Road Less Travelled. Gape in wonder.

Lake Fun

Last weekend we made our annual pilgrimage to Lake of the Ozarks with our friends the Fischers. Once again they own a lake house so we stayed with them and always had a great time, despite the rain. The have a wonderful lake view from their house and a flat back yard:

We brought down a radio controlled boat I inherited from my uncle Sam and had fun Saturday morning sending it forth onto the lake while it was still calm. Mr. Fischer had more fun annoying his dog with it I think, but the rest of us preferred the lake cruises:

And after taking out the small pleasure craft, we set forth in the large pleasure craft to explore the lake. We trailed two inner tubes behind the boat that you could ride in while Mr. Fischer did his best to separate you from your ride. We also found a nice cove to just get out and splash about in. The currents in the cove were strong and erratic as measured by my position relative to the boat riding at anchor as one moment I would be well away from it and another I'd look over to see it looming over me. Having fun is tiring, as can be seen from this photo of two intrepid inner tube riders taking a quick break:

Our further adventures await below the fold:

We didn't spend all our time out on the lake; Saturday evening, after watching an intense storm from the dock, we had some fireworks of our own. I don't know how many bottle rockets were in the box, but there was enough to satisfy all of us. Not only is a tube conveniently set up lakeside to shoot them, Mr. Fischer showed off his bare handed technique, which he could use to shoot the rockets into the lake where they made a most satisfying glurg upon explosion. Their dog also likes bottle rockets so much they have to take care that he doesn't eat them.

And if that weren't enough, Sunday morning we ignored the weather and set forth to find Tunnel Dam and Lake Niagua. After you wind through Ha Ha Tonka Park on Hwy D you just keeping going, and going, until after passing the Dodge pickup minus bed for sale you find Tunnel Dam Road and a Dodge pickup bed spray painted "free". The road starts out as the best gravel road I've been on, but once the going got interesting it often became a red clay road. On several instances we passed heavy earth moving and grading equipment, but none were apparently used on the road we traveled.

Tunnel Dam is a feat of engineering and nature both: in the 20's somebody had the bright idea of using a cave through a large ridge between two sections of the Niagua river to generate hydro electric power. So after straightning the cave and installing a couple of generators, they built a spillway dam to provide 40 feet of water pressure to the turbines and completed the dam in 1929.

After passing the road down to the power generation plant (no public access) on side of the ridge away from the lake you come to a scenic overlook where you can look out over the dam and Lake Niagua from far above or cower in fear of heights. You then drop precipitously down the ridge and wind around in bottom land until you come to the Niagua river and associated gravel bars which based upon the amount and kind of trash is a popular local partying spot:

We pulled over, skipped rocks, looked for crawdads, and otherwise messed around. But we weren't done, so we pressed on towards our destination without really knowing how to get there. Fortunately there are not a lot of roads to choose from in this relatively underpopulated part of the world, so were able to make our way to the dam itself. Hint: follow the signs to lake bypass, not access. Here is a view of the dam from the base:

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There was a lone fisherman, whose Ford pickup had a bed, but who despite the weather was without a shirt, at the pool below the dam:

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We of course made our way to the top of the dam where you could look out over the lake and examine the logs at the top of the dam at your leisure. It was a beautiful view so naturally I'm not including any pictures in the hope that you take the initiative to go there and see for yourself. You drive through a grove of spectacular sycamore trees before arriving at the dam:

That wraps up the picture portion of our tale except for a final farewell:

Wish You Were Here

We had perfect weather today. Sunny and warm, not warm really, that perfect temperature that is neither warm or cold, but simply unnoticable and wonderfully comfortable, but warm for a day in February. We just had to get out, but the kids had other plans and my wife was helping put together a slide show for our upcoming Blue and Gold Banquet, so it was just me and the dog taking on Castlewood State Park. So I brought the digital camera with me to show the others what they missed and a hiking we awent.

First we walked around near Kiefer Creek while Trooper got the marking and the sniffing out of his system. Here is a view of the creek:

Then it was up the steep trail to the bluffs overlooking the Meramec River where I didn't mind Trooper stopping to sniff and lift the leg. The view from the bluffs is gorgeous and it's hard to believe that you are still in the midst of civilization:

We hiked along the top of the bluffs for a short way with me stopping regularly to take pictures:

Then it was back down and back to the car. I drove down to the field the cub scout troop camps in by the river and then we set off on the trail along the river. The scenery was great here, but there were some spots with a lot of trash - I wished I had a bag with me to clean some of it up. I would have gone farther but I would have had to drug Trooper along, so it was back to the car so he could get some well deserved rest.

On A Winter's Day

I keep expecting my life to slow down, but it only speeds up. I know, we're all busy people, and the downside of ever expanding opportunities, goods, and services is that we are stretched thinner and thinner, like butter scraped over too much bread to borrow a phrase from Tolkien. Today we recuperated from Erin's birthday sleepover and so the rest of us went to the park with the pooch while Erin rested. The weather was quite pleasant for February in St. Louis but the scenery hasn't caught up:

I do have color right outside my front door in the guise of snow crocus which opened their blooms for the first time today in the warmth and sunshine (although it was overcast by the time I got out and took this picture):

Trooper especially loves going for walks -- all that territory to mark and all those other dogs to sniff for. Beauty is clearly in the eye of the beholder.