Day Trip

Alley Spring Mill

Day trips are so much fun. Packing a picnic lunch, buying snacks for the road, making sure the teenagers have their mp3 players attached to their ears, actually getting in the car and leaving, make me anticipate a fun adventure away from my normal routines.

Alley Spring Mill is located about two hours away from us along the Jacks Forks River in Southeast Missouri. It is part of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways and just one of the many springs along the Jacks Fork and Current Rivers. What I love about this area is it is very rural. No MickeyDs and Wallie Worlds around this part of Missouri. There is also so much to explore--much more than we had time to do in a day. This trip gave us a quick glimpse of the splendid scenery and history of the area to make us want to plan a longer stay on our next visit.

It's a beautiful spring that has a daily flow of 81 million gallons of water! There were black dragonflies everywhere. We hadn't seen black ones before so my daughter took several pictures.

We also visited the one room schoolhouse they had on display at the mill.

I enjoyed the fact that they had the schoolhouse fully restored on the inside so we good glimpse at what it would have been like to attend school here.

We ended the afternoon by swimming in the Jacks Fork, just as a thunderstorm came rolling in. We were tired when we pulled in at home but it was such a relaxing day, I was glad we made the trip.