Wading in Boiling Water

Wednesday May 25, 2011

We left Fred and Wilma’s cave on wheels sitting with Barney and Betty’s cave setting on the ground beside it and took off in the Rubble-mobile to look for passport stamps in Van Buren, Missouri at the National Scenic Riverways Visitor’s Center.  The drive took us on route 60 in addition to an alphabet soup of Missouri county roads, all of which were pretty good roads.  After an hour or so of driving we arrived at the VC.  There Betty and Wilma attacked the passport stamping station with the zeal of a T-Rex eating a Bronto-burger.   The Volunteer at the VC was a very nice lady who after living in Missouri for 20 years still claims to be from Seattle.  There were some very interesting exhibits at the VC including an old ledger (from a doctor's office showing medical and surgical services from 1905-06) which contained the name of man with Betty’s maiden name and a man named Flintstone—Interesting…

The rolling caves parked

Doctor's office ledger

We stopped at the Jolly Cone in Van Buren for a B-burger which we consumed at the establishment's patio tables on a very pleasant day.

After lunch we made our way to Big Springs, only a few miles from Van Buren.  The area had an extremely wet spring and the Current River was pretty high.  Big Springs has a normal flow of around 288 million gallons of water per day.  We couldn’t find a flow meter, but the water was high enough to be over the path that goes from the parking lot, around the spring to the bluff the spring flows out of.   Interestingly, there is a sign between the path and the spring that says “no wading, no swimming”.  The sign appeared to be standing in about 2’ of water.  At any rate Betty waded around the path to the face of the bluff to get pictures of the water boiling out of the ground.

Betty wading in the spring

Uh-oh!

The water was coming out of the ground so fast that it was boiling up 18” to 2’ above the surface of the spring.  It is really amazing to see that much water coming from a hole in the ground.  

That's amazing!

We dashed back to the VC in Van Buren to pick up a map thinking we would return to the caves by another route.  In the end we went back the same way we came.  It was a very enjoyable day.