Hiking the White Bison Trail in Lone Elk Park, Missouri

So I was going to a hiking meetup at Chubb Trail this morning, and I took a wrong turn. Google Maps was all "No worries, I got ya bro, just U-turn here, and turn there and go like 2 miles and turn right and..."

Uhh, Google... that's a dead end. I can't go through there.

"Nah bro, trust me. I got this. Just keep going, and -- wait, what are you doing? OK, that's alright, just do another U-turn and..."

OK, Google, you're fired.

I dropped a comment to the meetup and told them to go on without me, then drove aimlessly around Lone Elk Park until I found the eponymous wapiti:

A little ways further I found the White Bison Trailhead and decided to park and hike! The sign said it was a 3.2 mile hike, and that it was Difficult (with a black diamond symbol). Undaunted, I forged ahead. Spoiler: the trail was not difficult at all, unless you consider a few moderate hills, felled trees, and mud slicks to be major impediments.

^{Click to Biggify}

The hike was straightforward. The trail was clearly visible, but not overdone. None of that pavement or gravel nonsense; just a nice, beaten path. You can see a little bit of it on the right side of the picture above.

Along the way I found another Elk, this one a short ways off the track. He seemed to be enjoying some breakfast, but he was super chill and didn't complain at all when I got a bit closer to snag some shots. I got the feeling he was happy to see me go, though.

I also got this VR photo a little further along the trail. You can see the elk nearby, and an observation tower off to the left, up the hill a ways. The VR photo has an audio recording built in, and if you look at it in a VR headset, it'll play the ambient sounds from the trail for you to give you an even better feel for the scene.

I took a quick detour up the hill to climb the observation tower and took the picture below from the top. Can you spot the elk?

Yeah, me either... But here's a chipmunk:

And that's pretty much it! It was a good time, I'm glad I went, even though it didn't go quite to plan. As it turns out though, that same meetup will be hiking this trail tomorrow morning, so I didn't actually miss the hike, I was just super early for the next one! :D #PostHocRationalizations

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Thanks for reading!

_{All photos taken by me, but Google embellished the first one a bit for me. =) Intellectual property is a lie; use the text and/or photos however you want. If you do, though, you get extra awesome points for mentioning it in a comment!}