This post is part of an ongoing series summarizing each State Park in Missouri that our family has attended. We hope to visit each of 54 State Parks before the kids graduate from high school.
After we spent the morning at Lake Wappapello State Park, we took a journey to one of the more remote options in the system: nearly in the middle of the state, a few miles from the border with Arkansas, lies Grand Gulf State Park. Again, if the goal was to hit the parks that we otherwise are highly unlikely to randomly cross, we had to make sure we hit this one! It was a two hour drive from Lake Wappapello, so that allowed a bit of rest time in the car before seeing what Grand Gulf had to offer.
The park itself features a cave system that collapsed thousands of years ago, leaving behind Missouri’s “Little Grand Canyon.” Before checking out the landmark itself, we took the 0.75 mile Natural Bridge Trail, which was among the easier ones we’d been on over this trip. There were some ups and downs, but it was generally suited to a wide audience of visitors. We always appreciate loop trails like this, too, so we don’t have any backtracking and are otherwise seeing a new landscape the entire time.
After the hike, we descended as far as we could down the hill toward the opening to the canyon. The history of the area was rather interested, though it is disappointing no one can go into the cave system. In the late-19th and early-20th century, there are records of folks attempting to explore the cave system, but a series of collapses over the millennia have made it mostly impossible. Aspects of the system were accessible into the 1920s, but a series of storms and floods washed trees and other debris down into the caves, shutting off sections. Even today, rains that get heavy enough can collect water in the canyon as high as 100 ft, taking weeks to drain.
While we were there, there was water down in the depths, but nowhere near that high. The “100 ft line” is essentially where the bottom of the deck hits here, so it’s crazy to think of what it looks like with that much rain!
I should note that this cave system has been traced another 9 miles away, emerging in Arkansas at Mammoth Spring. Apparently, that’s a state park, too, but for now, we aren’t planning on adding parks from other states to our list!
All in all, it was an interesting, albeit brief, visit. I think we’re glad we knocked this one out while we were down in southern Missouri, since making a special trip down there to hit this park may have been more disappointing. The trail just isn’t that long, and you can’t go deep enough to see much of the cave like you can at Rock Bridge State Park, so while it’s a beautiful view and an awesome sight to see, in a state where you don’t normally see formations like it, there just isn’t much to do there after you’ve seen the sight. Glad we went, but probably won’t return any time soon!