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.
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It is the Mind that Calculates...

I am dying for some adventure. Sitting around the house, applying for jobs, waiting to hear back, puttering, cleaning, watching TV… well, it ain’t me babe. There was a time in my not-so-recent past where being a lady of leisure would have held a certain appeal. I think it was because I worked at a spa booking appointments for ladies of leisure and I would feel a pang of jealousy that they could get a massage at 2:15 in the afternoon on a Tuesday and Thursday.

But they obviously had the means as well as the time to receive such services. I do not.

Which is not to say that I’m in any financial straights, but I’m not going to spend any more money than I have to when I’m not pulling any in. So I sit. And wait. And hope.

I want to work!

So in the meantime, I surf the Internet and dream wistfully of local places to visit that aren’t in any guidebooks. I mean, c’mon! If you aren’t supposed to go there, isn’t it all the more appealing?

Or maybe it’s just me…


For those of you not in the know, St. Louis is filled with local tales of hauntings and spooky tales. The Lemp Mansion is the number one example of local ghost stories. But the book The Exorcist, and subsequent movies, were based on the sad events that brought a little boy and his family to St. Louis. However, there are plenty of other attractions in the metropolitan area.

My itch to explore local 'paranomal' lore, for lack of a better word, isn't new. I can't say that it started when Tom took me to explore the Miles Mausoleum, but it did rocket from there. While it’s completely legit to visit, the tales involved in the desecration of the mausoleum make it sad to visit, but I felt no sense of spookiness. It was a rush to poke around the cemetery, but it's also quite a popular place to visit, so the illicit factor is quite low.

Recently, I happened across reference on the town of Moselle in Franklin County. A posting from the Underground Ozarks forum says (sic): "park in the church parking lot then there is a field behing it and foll ow the field back to the tree line you'll find a creek cross it and there will be an old worn road just in dirt follow that up a ways and youll see a whole old ass town up there watch out for mountian lions because they are up there - and if you remember the "yetti" sightings in missouri forever agoe this is also that place- it would be a very good place for a real the hills have eyes sort of thing so be caryful up there people around there are very wierd maby bring a gun of two" I don’t know if it would be worth the drive, but you don’t know until you go, right?

On Friday, I was jonesing to go out to Bee Tree Park down in Oakville, with it’s abandoned castle. It’s the castle that appeals to me, obviously. I know it’s fenced off and, supposedly, inaccessible, but such a thing of beauty should not be tucked away from public viewing. I’ve never seen it, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but needless to say, my curiosity has been piqued.

I also came across unverified information that there are two cemeteries in August A Busch Memorial Wildlife Park. Formerly an old Army training site, there are plenty of old munitions bunkers left over from WWII. Have explored some of the bunkers years ago and it's high time I go back out there. For a multitude of reasons it seems. Maybe when the leaves turn… I’m sure it’ll be GORGEOUS out there.

But over the weekend, my mind went from Bee Tree Park to another intriguing area south of where I live. Once I started doing some research, I decided that I really want to explore the grounds of the old Robert Koch Hospital. I know it would be considered trespassing. I know it would be wrong. But it saddens me that so many people died there and have been abandoned from our collective memory. My exploration would be self-serving, but it was also be an acknowledgment of people who weren’t even acknowledged with individual graves.

So maybe once I’m working, I’ll feel apt to drive to these places and explore. Once I have less time on my hands.
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