Zombie Road

As promised, pictures of my expedition last Saturday (August 9th) with Tom. I won't rehash too many details from the trip since I previously did so, but I will break up the postings according to where the pictures are from.



Now, I didn't take hardly any shots of Zombie Road because, quite frankly, shots of crumbling road with thick vegetation on both sides, extending seemingly Heavenward, just isn't that exciting. I kept waiting for an abandoned structure or two, but it would seem that Tom and I didn't hike far enough

(Although I think we hiked plenty far as it was, thank you very much.)

When we came across this washout, I thought we had hit the end of the road. Tom thought otherwise and after he made it across to see if the road did indeed continue on around the bend, I soon joined him and we hiked another good half mile or more. Time and distance seem to dissolve when one cannot see the sky because of the dense trees.

Let me point out that the gully is deeper than it looks. I'd say it's about 4 feet deep, give or take a half foot in different areas.






I really think, and really hope, that this set of stairs is just a natural occurrence. The road below is washed out, showing the layers of the bedrock. Seeing the natural striations in the stone was pretty hip, but then made me question their actual naturalness, since the uniformity was so even. Was it the foundation for the road? The road had existed for decades prior to paving, so were we seeing the previous incarnations?

But the stairs were pretty interesting and definitely added to the spooky mood. I'm sure Tom was actually so over my girlie-girl routine, but aside from abandoned beer bottles, a blanket that had seen much better days draped over a limb and a trash can (Trash cans as trash seems slightly oxymoronic to me.), this was by far the most interesting thing we happened upon. Well, that and the road Tom's GPS said came in onto Lawler Ford Road, but never appeared.

If it is indeed an abandoned set of stairs to a long gone building, I'd be curious to know more about it.

And when I do go back, I'll hike to the end and find the buildings that are supposedly down by the Meramec, if they survived the last go-round of flooding.