My Corner Online
Union Ridge Conservation Area
Union Ridge Conservation Area was the last place on our day's journey on Saturday, May 20, 2023, as we hurried to set up camp in the parking area at the Union Ridge Lake. Union Ridge is in three counties in Missouri and where we were camped was barely into Adair County. We drove into Sullivan County and enjoyed the country drive the next day on Sunday, May 21, 2023. The country drive observing all the parking areas and the hiking trails made for a lovely day. The trails were all mown through prairie grass and I would have liked to take a hike, but I had enough of ticks for the day and did not feel like spraying myself down.
While we were camped overnight we were in a parking area and it got rather cold at night, but we were cozy in the tent. It took a while for the sun to come over the trees and hit our tent so it took a while for us to warm up enough to get moving. The night before we watched the sunset over the lake and had a similar frigid experience with each minute seeming to get colder quickly. I walked about in the morning while we were having tea and coffee and a little bit of breakfast. First I walked across the dam and I greatly enjoyed the birds. I had used my bird app while in the tent and there are a great number of different kinds of birds at this spot. I mostly enjoyed the redwing blackbirds happily soaring from one bush top or twig to another. I had brought my long distance lens this time and could have come back with a chair for some photo opportunities, but by the time I had walked up the hill and back down I was covered in ticks and my only concern was inspection for the removal of ticks. I should have known better and sprayed myself down as we had brought some spray.
We had an experience overnight which I describe in the video with noises outside our tent as we slept. We both concluded that a bunch of deer had moved in to our camping area overnight and now I wish I had peaked out a window to confirm it, but I was a bit too scared to move at the time until I realized it were deer. I did yell loudly twice in an effort to scare off whatever it was and the dogs and hubby slept right through my loud yelling. I could not believe it! I thought they were better watch dogs than that and what if I needed help in the middle of the night and was not able to arouse my husband. Such is life.
This is the camping area barely into Sullivan County.
This is the road into the camping area by the lake where we stayed.
This is the trail but oh, I got ticks here!
These are the birds that my Merlin app picked up the next morning. I really enjoyed all the morning birds!
This was the short morning walk across the dam at the lake which I enjoyed as you can see in the above video.
This is the view from the top of the hill when I took to the trail.
The trail turned into a small track from a wheel.
This is the trail from the parking lot as shown in the above video that looked like it might be a great walk. From this parking lot was a great view and we almost wished we had camped here.
This was yet another parking area and trail. You can see it in the above video.
In the above video we come to a place where it is not marked and we did not know whether to go right or left. We were where the blue marker is located and we took a right and it was the right choice! I can see this place being a great place for an Autumn drive.
There sure was a lot of logs along a section of the road. We were not sure what was up with that. It went on for a long while with logs on the side of the road.
