It was late in the afternoon when I finished shooting at Johnson’s Shut-ins. The gas tank Low Fuel alert had been on for some time, the light was fading and the mosquitoes were coming out, but I couldn’t pass up the turnoff to Elephant Rocks State Park.
I was getting no cellular data signal (or voice, either, for that matter), so I couldn’t do any Internet research to see if I was in the right spot or what I was supposed to see, so I did a quick scramble over some likely-looking rocks and made a dash before my mosquito blood supply Low Fuel light came on.
This is the kind of place where you could spend all day watching the light change the scenery around you. It would also be a good place to let kids blow off steam.
Here’s the Missouri State Parks website that tells you how to get there and some of the history of the area.
Elephant Rocks State Park Photo Gallery
I don’t shoot a lot of rocks and roots pictures, but I may have to go back when the leaves turn. I’ll also haul out the tripod so I can stop down the lens to get more depth of field so that more things are sharp in the photos. Click on any image to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.
I remember hiking there with friends, many years ago. One of the trails included a particularly narrow spot passing between two rocks, aptly named ‘Fat Man’s Squeeze’. We had great fun teasing one another “did you make it through okay?”
Elephant Rocks and Johnson Shut-Ins were two favorite weekend or Sunday afternoon destinations for our family. The geology present always fascinated me. Igneous formations in the middle of the United States are a geologic anomaly.
Throw in Silver Mines just off of Missouri 72 west of Fredericktown and Sam A Baker State Park and you have a nice group of really neat places, three of which had good swimming holes; all nice day trips from Cape.
I attended summer camp as a boy in the ’50’s at Wiggins Ozark Camp in Lesterville. We made many trips to the Shut Ins and there is nary an Elephant Rock over which we didn’t scramble. I always envied the older kids who jumped from the ‘cliffs’ into the roiling waters. What a great place highlighting Nature’s beauty.
Omg! Walter, I went to Wiggins also and then was a counselor there 2 yrs in college! Very fond memories.
Ken,the photo gallery needs a selfie of you, grimacing, holding up the big boulder at the top. That was always a hit picture when we took our kids there.