… where the Buffalo Roam!
When I visited Prairie State Park (southwestern Missouri) last week, I first set up my tent, which would be my home for a couple of days:
The campground at the park is quite small … two spots! But on my previous visits to the park, I’ve never seen anyone camping there. On this trip, however, I arrived to find one of the 2 spots taken by a couple of senior fishermen. Even so, there was plenty of room for me … the camping spots are quite spacious here:
After unloading everything and setting up camp, I headed out to one of the park’s many trails, where I found some of the behemoth residents of the prairie, the American Bison (Bos bison) grazing among the area’s wildflowers:
Much of Prairie State Park’s soil was too rocky for early settlers to plow, so it was used for haying and grazing. This has left a large tract of land with high-quality unplowed prairie that today has some splendid wildflower displays! Over the next few posts, I’ll feature some of the many wildflowers and small prairie creatures I found during my 3 days of photographing there.