WINONA — Southeast Missouri residents have a new educational and
recreational resource in their back yard. Visitors to the heart of the
Ozarks also might want to visit the newly opened Twin Pines Conservation Education Center (CEC) for a glimpse into the region’s natural and cultural history.

This 456-acre area on Highway 60, 1.3 miles east of the junction with
Highway 19 North in Winona, is the home of an interpretive center that
emphasizes Missouri’s forest heritage.

Grand opening will be 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 19.

Many programs, special events and classes are available by
appointment. For event information and registration, call (573)
325-1381.

Regular hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through
Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, closed Monday and Tuesday.

Besides organized activities, Twin Pines offers opportunities for
hiking, birdwatching, nature photography and other nature-related
activities. A trail through the area provides access to pine-oak
woodland and several other forest types.

Twin Pines CEC places a special emphasis on the history of the
Ozarks’ timber industry. Displays at Twin Pines include vintage
logging equipment, a log cabin and an early 20th century schoolhouse.

Youth fishing clinics for largemouth bass, hybrid sunfish and channel
catfish is allowed in 2-acre Mule Camp Pond by special permit only.
Hunting is not permitted at Twin Pines CEC.

You have the this month opportunity to see world-class bicycle racing in Traveler Country. The first Tour of Missouri will bring the Tour de France champion and U.S. National champion to the Show Me State for a six-day, 15-team race starting in Kansas City and ending in St. Louis, Sept. 11-16.

Tour de France champion Alberto Contador of Spain and American Levi Leipheimer, the third-place finisher at that race, have been announced as members of the Discovery Channel Team, along with U.S. National Champion George Hincapie of Greenville, S.C and other top competitors.
The event is patterned after the successful Tour of Georgia and Amgen Tour of California. Race director Jim Birrell calls the event “a great postcard of Missouri to the world” and Lt. Governor Peter Kinder says the race will capture the imagination of the state and could pump millions of dollars into local economies along the route.

Here’s some detail on the legs in or near Traveler Country:
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, STAGE 4 - Lebanon to Columbia, road race, 133 mi. (214 km). START: 10:30 AM EST FINISH: 3:25 PM The race will snake through Guthrie, and Ulman, highlighted by a sprint in Jefferson City, and will finish in downtown Columbia.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, STAGE 5 - Jefferson City to St. Charles, road race, 126.6 mi. (204km). START: 11:30 AM EST FINISH: 3:40 PM Starting against the backdrop of Missouri’s Capitol, the course features a serpentine route along Highways 94 and 100, passing through Augusta, Hermann and Washington en route to the finish in St. Charles, near the Lewis and Clark Rendezvous.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, STAGE 6 - St. Louis, circuit, 74 mi. (119 km). START: 1 PM EST FINISH: 3:50 PM The start and finish will take place Union Station. Riders will race seven circuits of 10-plus miles through urban terrain, including the northeast part of Forest Park and passing by the north and south sides of St. Louis University.

For more information, go to http://www.tourofmissouri.com

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The Outdoor Expo at the Busch Shooting Range in St. Charles County Saturday, July 28, attracted some 1,400 people to test firearms, practice skeet-shooting and casting, and visit booths of various outdoor providers from gun and archery dealers to game farms.

In the photo, seven-year-old Marek Nelson of Union, Mo., aims a 9 mm Beretta pistol under the direction of shooting range volunteer Mike Stassi.

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By Emery Styron
River Hills Traveler

Don Collop of the Flying T—E Ranch, Rutledge, Mo., added historic flavor to the Outdoor Expo at Busch Shooting Range on Saturday, July 28.

Collop is a “cousie,” that is a chuckwagon cook, and brought along his 1910 wagon and cooking acoutrements, for the education of the many hunters, anglers, campers and others who attended the event and might want to compare notes on outdoor cooking.

Lonehand.com’s website credits Texas rancher Charlie Goodnight with creation of the prototype chuckwagon in 1866, during the era of the great cattle drives from Western lands to railheads in Kansas. Goodnight rebuilt a Studebaker wagon to carry water, firewood and provisions and cowboys bedrolls. Key features were the hinged lid of the chuck box, that dropped down to provide a work surface, and a canvas hammock suspended beneath the wagon to carry any scarce fuel collected along the way.

Collop’s wagon was manufactured by Peter Shetler in Chicago and first retailed by Roberts Bros. & Green Mercantile in Centralia, Mo. He has it outfitted with typical cowboy cooking gear. He and his wife, Evelyn, enjoy taking the wagon to schools and various events to make presentations on the cowboy way of life. Rounding out the chuckwagon gang are “hoodlums” (that’s what the cousie’s assistants were called) Hershel Linnenbringer and Gary Gooch.

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Our family spent the week of July 4 in Washington, D.C., a far remove in miles, but not in influence, from the wet, wild, scenic and historic environs of Traveler Country.

One of our stops, for example was the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, overlooking the Tidal Basin. Touring the site reminded me that it was FDR’s jobs programs that put the craftsmen to work who built the stone entrances, lodges, waterways and other structures that give Missouri State Parks their distinctive, attractive appearance.

We toured the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, next to an ancient red brick building with the familiar green emblem of the U.S. Forest Service out front. If this obsolete structure is the only home of the Forest Service in the nation’s capital, I wonder if the agency has the tools to do its job.

Somewhere near the capital, we saw a statute of General U.S. Grant on horseback. According to biographer Jean Edward Smith, Grant took command of the Union army on August 30, 1861, at Cape Girardeau.

Grant’s footprints, of course, are all over St. Louis, where he even has a car wash named for him. Grant was posted to Jefferson Barracks after graduating from West Point. He met his wife, Julia, in St. Louis, and they built a home called Hardscrabble, which still stands, and lived later on Julia’s home place, White Haven, on Gravois Road. We’re all familiar with Grant’s Farm, where you can tour Grant’s cabin.

When he was president, Grant intervened to help his friend James Eads finish his bridge over the Mississippi River, over the objections of steamboat interests, according to information published by the St.Louis Public Library.

You can’t walk around downtown D.C. without dealing with the National Park Service, which manages the National Mall and many of the monuments. I couldn’t help but think of the Park Service and its stewardship of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways.

Congress was in July 4 recess and many Washingtonians had fled to avoid the crush of tourists like us, so we didn’t see many of the elected officials and agency employees whose decisions have so much impact on our daily lives in Traveler Country and beyond.

As I gazed down on the empty House of Representatives chamber from the gallery, I was reminded how interconnected we all are in this representative democracy.

That’s how it is and how it should be.

Emery Styron
River Hills Traveler

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Cross-country bicyclists are a common sight on the steep hills and scenic byways of Traveler Country. Many are heavily loaded with camping gear and supplies. Their itineraries are not for the weak-kneed or faint of heart.

Traveler encountered Charlie and Sue Johnson of Bettendorf, Iowa, taking a break from camping at the Madison Inn in Fredericktown. The couple is on a three-month ride from the Quad Cities in Iowa to Mobile, Ala., then to Owen Sound, Ontario, north of Toronto.

This is their fourth major summer ride. Previous trips took them from Washington to Maine, California to Florida and Oregon to Virginia.

The pair found some of Missouri’s highway signage confusing but the countryside beautiful.

They had overnighted in Lesterville, and came to Fredericktown on Missouri 72, which they planned to take to Cape Girardeau. They found Fredericktown appealing and decided to stay an extra night to take in the rodeo and attend church. Then it was off to Cape in hopes of finding a good bike shop before heading to Mobile.

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Jim Anderson of Eminence and I spent a pleasant day last week fishing and floating a stretch of the Jacks Fork River between Bay Creek and Alley Spring.

Jim grew up in Piedmont, earned an ag degree at MU, and worked in agribusiness in Iowa, Kansas and Colorado before buying the Shady Lane Cabins and Motel in Eminence five years ago. He’s a wealth of information about the Current and Jacks Fork.

The night before we fished, we drove out to see some of the wild horse band that roams the Scenic Riverways. As many Traveler readers know, the horses are descended from those turned loose by farmers in the Great Depression of the 1930s and have been the subject of much controversy and publicity over the years.

It was fun to watch the stallion, mares and colts graze and frolic in the dusk. Jim tells me the National Park Service culls the herd to keep the numbers around 40.

So far as the fishing goes, we caught enough to keep things interesting but nothing to brag about. Jim’s an excellent guide and didn’t want me to be skunked. I don’t think he went so far as to put a fish on my hook when I wasn’t looking, but he worked hard to make sure I caught something.

One lesson learned is to be careful about pulling on lures caught in tree limbs. I had one, I think it was a Rooster Tail, come flying back across the river and knock the right lens out of my glasses and cut my cheek. I’m lucky not to have lost an eye. Snipping the line or at least ducking my head would have been the wiser course. Hindsight’s 20/20, even out of one eye.

It was also nice to renew the acquaintance of Shane Van Steenis at Harvey’s
Alley Spring Canoe Rental. Shane hails from Bloomfield, Iowa, near where I worked and lived the past several years. He and Jim both report a good start to the season on the Jacks Fork and Upper Current.

Emery Styron
River Hills Traveler

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Two brothers, two nephews and I enjoyed a beautiful afternoon on the Eleven Point River last Thursday. We put in at Whitten and floated to Riverton, with a stop at the lovely Boze Mill Spring.

Water was a little higher than normal for this time of year and a stiff wind blowing upstream made it a little hard to get started. We eventually learned how to travel with the current and found the going easier.

It was the first time in a canoe for young James Styron, who sighted a muskrat, several turtles and herons and a kingfisher.

We enjoyed getting acquainted with Mike and Wendy Jones, friendly proprietors of Hufstedler’s Canoe Rental at Riverton.

More photos from the float trip are on the Photo Gallery section of this site.

Emery Styron
Traveler publisher

The point I was trying to make and many missed is that we HAVE gun control all over the country and it is constitutional. Some of it is quite good, in fact. You can’t call the requirement for hunter education in hunting anything but gun control. And it is certainly a good thing.

We are going to have more gun control legislation as time passes. We’d best be in a position to have some influence in the writing of those laws. We won’t if we splinter over silly things like personal opinion on the appearance of some firearms. Nor if we paint a broad segment of society as being our arch enemies.

One letter writer pegged me in that regard. Indeed, I painted the whole NRA as being radical. That was wrong. I guess it is because the people who snipe at me for having a more “liberal” view always seem to point out that they are NRA members as if they represent the whole organization. 

Bob Todd, Traveler editor

Thunderbird Petroglyph, Washington State Park

It’s been an interesting week in Traveler Country.

I camped two nights in Washington State Park on the Big River between De Soto and Potosi and pulled a major camping boner at Babler State Park near Wildwood.

You wouldn’t realize driving down Missouri 21 what a vast, rugged jewel Washington State Park is. It has more than 2,100 acres of high ridges and deep valleys, bordering on the Big River. Native American petroglyphs estimated at 1,000 years old are just five minutes off the highway, along with fishing and swimming access on the river and great hiking trails.

There were only three sets of campers in the campground while I was there, plus the host: what appeared to be a homeless family, a roofer and his dog and a motor coach. There were no racoon problems as in Babler State Park. That may be due to the blare of televisions late into the night.

I moved the popup to Babler on Wednesday so as to attend the quarterly meeting of the Missouri Smallmouth Alliance at Powder Valley Nature Center. It was there I made an error no camper should.

I rolled into the campground about 4:30 p.m., checked in with the host. She said she’d find me and collect the camp fee. I set up the trailer, gulped down a sandwich and headed off to Powder Valley without actually registering my site.

When I got back to the park entrance about 10 p.m., the gates were closed and I had no code to punch into the electronic keypad. I could have contacted the St. Louis County police and asked them to call someone at the campground, but no one in the campground even knew my name since I wasn’t registered.

I rented a cheap motel room in Manchester and went out and registered the next morning. Glad I chose a $9 basic site instead of a $16 electric one since I didn’t even stay overnight.

The moral of the story. Be sure you register before you leave the campground.

Dave Hamilton, a furbearer biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation, was featured speaker at the Smallmouth Alliance meeting. He acknowledged that the otter population has exploded since the critters were reintroduced to Missouri 23 years ago and that on some streams and farm ponds, otters have been really hard on the fish population.

We’ll have more about that in a future print issue of Traveler, July or later.