Floating Tips

Send us your floating tips! Just use the "comments" link below!

Floating Questions

Send us your floating questions! Just use the "comments" link below!

Camping Tips

Send us your camping tips! Just use the "comments" link below!

Camping Questions

Send us your camping questions! Use the "comments" link below, I'll post it promptly!

A poem about Ozark Outdoors

In 1999 I camped at Ozark Outdoors from the end of Feb. thru to the middle of Sept., it was a wonderful experience. My campsite was extroadinary, had electricity and two large tents (one for my computer and office stuff and one for living/sleeping) with three large tarps w/center poles tied to trees for covering the tents and picnic tables with shade. Often times fellow campers would stop bye and comment on what an awesome campsite it was. The poem below describes a compilation of things I saw and experienced during my stay there. The only negative I had to deal with was bugs in my computer (not the digital kind - the real kind!).

Summer of ‘99 - Camping On The Meramec

Waking quietly with the dawn,
mist in the air, and the birds in song.

Doe and fawn cross the field,
Geese flying bye, honking say hi!

Turkeys dismount from their lofty roosts.
Calling their places, forming their groups.

Squirrels bark and chatter at some unwanted guest.
Blackbirds argue over last nights scraps.

Robins stalk worms in the fresh cut grass.
Peepfrogs are quiet, getting their rest.

Locusts are screeching, they’ve no time to waste.
A bullfrog bellows, come here-make haste.

A woodpecker taps on a thorny locust tree,
digging up bugs its collecting for three.

A red-tailed hawk circles the pasture
the bunnies are fast but the hawk is still faster.

A flicker sails across the meadow,
a falcon dives and the flicker cries.

A buzzard glides way up high.
The bluejays holler at a crow too close bye.

A painted turtle sits on a log,
and the great blue heron stalks minnow and frog.

A terrapin meanders across the road.
As I stoke up the fire I frighten a toad.

A lizard jumps from the stick in my hand,
a daddy long legs crawls up my arm,
a lightening bug lands on my nose,
but none of us suffer any harm.

The coffee smells good and tastes even better
My cigarette smoke hugs the ground.

Then comes a quick shower,
drops tap on the tent and
after it passes the quiet laments
as the drips make their way through the leaves.

I tune in on a subtle sensation,
then I feel it and hear it with ease.

I pat my dog’s head and close my eyes
and listen to the woods breathe.

by Meramec Riverman,

while camping at Ozark Outdoors,

Leasburg, Mo. spring & summer 1999

A playground for all!

Presently, the upper Meramec remains a playground for all interested in enjoying the Ozarks outdoors and is enjoyed by untold thousands of people annually. The industry that has developed around its recreational use pours much needed revenue into a rural economy which often lacks ample opportunities for employment or profitable business ventures. Local float liveries offer a variety of options to floaters; inner tubes, kayaks, canoes, jonboats, and river rafts, are instantly available to satisfy the needs of even the most discriminating floaters. Riverfront campgrounds and lodges offer everything from primitive camping, to horseback trail rides, to catered luxury cabins. Nearby, there is ample state forest and numerous wildlife and conservation areas set aside for hiking, hunting, and exploring nature. Meramec State Park in Sullivan offers a wide variety of services and activities (including a tour of Fisher Cave), and the natural wonders of Onondaga Cave and Meramec Caverns complete the setting. During summer months, hordes of relief seeking city dwellers, and others, come to enjoy the simple yet satisfying outdoor pleasures of the river. Leaving the noisy hustle bustle of modern life behind, they lose the stress, and relax for a time, while gliding over cool clear water, past scenic bluffs and forests. People of all walks of life and socio-economic levels come and enjoy the natural environment and, in the water or on the beaches, many of the social trappings and divisions which normally separate them disappear. After all, as the river rises from many connected sources to become one, we are all part of a river of humanity, equally connected to our genetic ancestral sources. What better way can there be to renew the connection with our primordial past, and revive the pleasure of our natural heritage, than being in, on, or around, the Meramec River.

About the Meramec River

I am all about rivers, especially the Meramec River, so here is a short introducrion...

About fifteen miles Southeast of the town of Salem in Southeastern Missouri, near the junction of Dent County Roads 559 & 560, a spring-fed brook begins its journey North. Before long, the brook merges with the ‘Dry Branch’ (on the right), ‘Wofford Branch’ and ‘Carty Branch’ (both on the left) and becomes the source of the Meramec River. For many millions of years the Meramec has been carving its twisting, sometimes tortuous 240 mile course into the solid rock of the Ozark Plateau, scouring its way through a deep, slowly widening valley, bordered by limestone bluffs and steep hills. It is joined along the way by innumerable springs, creeks, and four large tributaries, which transform the Meramec into a one hundred yard - to two hundred yard wide flood plane stream at its confluence with the Mighty Mississippi eighteen miles below St. Louis.
Maramec spring (note the spelling) is the first of the four major contributors, it pours an average volume of one hundred million gallons of cold clear water into the Meramec per day,
swelling the river to twice its size. It is interesting to note that the Dry Fork, which is about the same size as the Meramec in that area, loses most of its volume underground to become a major contributor to Maramec Spring, and in a round-about way - a major contributor to the Upper Meramec. Over the next thirty miles, the inflows from many smaller branches turn the river into a prime stream. Then, from the right, the translucent waters of the second and largest
of the headwater contributors, the Courtois-- (pronounced code-away)--Huzzah creek, mingles with the Meramec, giving it the impression of a truly big river. Swirling on past Onondaga Cave (Leasburg), Meramec State Park (Sullivan), and the Meramec Caverns (Stanton)--all on the left-- the Meramec receives the cloudy waters of the Bourbeuse River--its’ only major contributor from the west. As the darker waters flow on, the valley widens, and the river becomes “a series of long, slow, wide pools, connected by short, fast, riffles.” Around twenty-five miles below the Bourbeuse River confluence, the last major contributor, the Big River, flows into the Meramec from the right. Now, even wider and more sluggish, it enters the Mississippi flood-plain, and wends its way another thirty miles before draining into the Mississippi.