Retired and Trippin

We awoke to a much brighter day than yesterday. Blue clear skies with a temperature of 66 when we departed the motel at 9:00. We rode straight south to our destination. We had a good time exploring the park, hiking the Devil’s Icebox Trail and the Sinkhole Trail, which were to take us to the highlights of the park.  The icebox trail was a wooden boardwalk with numerous steps while the other trail was a natural trail though wooded areas. I shouldn’t confess because it shows how senile we’re getting but after we’d been home for some time we realized we missed the feature the park was named for – the natural rock bridge. To view the bridge we had to go down a series of stairs to a view point. We said at the time we’d come back to that but we never did. Maybe on another trip? In a couple years we may have forgotten we were ever at this park and it can be a whole new experience. After leaving the park we rode south through Jefferson City to Eldon where we stopped for fuel and an avera

I found Rock Bridge Memorial State Park on the map.  It is located just south of Columbia, MO and it looked like a good park to explore and do some hiking ( https://plus.google.com/photos/104542123131082631220/albums/6138117296576217857?authkey=CKe3gJbq8OXRiAE ).  We had a couple days available so we took off. The TV weather folks told us this morning it would be wet along our route.  They were right but it was all mist and very light rain – nothing terrible.  It was 55 degrees when we left home at 10:15. We left Shawnee and made our way to Hwy 24 eastbound out of Independence, MO.  Just east of Levasy I intended to take Hwy 224 east along the Missouri River.  As soon as we turned, however, there was a MODOT sign flashing the message that the road was closed daily during a time span we could not decipher due to numerous burned out lights.  We decided to return to Hwy 24 just to be sure. We toured through Lexington, MO after being lured off the highway by signs advertising 4 diffe