What should you do with your day when the forecast calls for a March 2nd in Missouri with temps in the 70s? Rise early and get to Roundrock! When I rose at about 5:00, it was already 63 degrees out, and the sky was clear. We threw the usual gear into the back of the truck then threw ourselves in, sprinting out of town toward our little bit of forest on the edge of the Missouri Ozarks. We held great anticipation since the game camera had been focused on the filled suet cage for three weeks! The wily woodpeckers would have found it in that time and filled the memory card with their antics. Except that they didn't. The camera had taken only four pictures. Three of those were of #1 Son Seth shortly after we set up the camera. The fourth was washed out and may have been snapped because of a flash of lightning. I don't know. Clearly I'm no Rurality with this device yet. We took down the game camera from this clearly unproductive location (though maybe it will be better in the summer when the itinerant woodpeckers return to Missouri) and moved it to a different location with different bait that I'll tell you about in a different post on a different day. Although most of the gravel road from the paved county road was dry and firm, there were a few soft spots, including several within the boundaries of Roundrock. We managed to avoid bogging down in those, but we also managed to dig some new furrows. All that money I have been saving for a new truck can now be put to a different use. We made our way toward the lake, full of anticipation about how high it might have filled in our absence. All of the usual signs we watch on the drive down (the Corps of Engineers lake, several rivers, a seasonal swamp) looked promising. We were not disappointed. Our lake was about a foot and a half below full pool! It was glorious. We stood on the dam, looking across the expanse of water, side by side in silence for several minutes. Two waterfowl had risen from the lake when we noisily stomped down the gravel road to the dam. One was a duck that settled back on the water farther from us. The other was much larger, though I never got a good look at it. It may have been a heron or a goose. Or it may have been a hawk that wasn't in the lake at all but in a nearby tree. I was dazzled by the water. Whatever plans we had for the moment were forgotten as we decided to treat ourselves to a hike around the lake. Equipped with no tools aside from my camera, we set out, walking on dimly remembered paths high above the usual water line. The farther we got from the truck, the more chores I remembered I had in mind for the day, but that didn't matter. We had an almost full lake, well before the spring rains were expected. (Never mind the leaks.) Our path was blocked in many places by fallen branches from the December ice storm. That meant we had to divert here and there and climb over and around them. By the time we got to Libby's Island (which wasn't surrounded by water, sadly) we decided to pull out the comfy chairs we keep cached there and fall into a little pre-lunch stupor. We were successful in this ambition, with the warm sun on our skin and glinting off the lake water nearby. I heard some turkeys gobbling over the south ridge. I think we devoted a half hour of our day to this bliss. I decided after that to hike into the hill on the north side of the lake (rather than continue along the shoreline -- which was blocked in two places by cedars that had split from the ice and meant a wide diversion to get past). Part of me was hoping to find one of the really big round rocks since this is where we have found two in the past. With all of the youth and strength we had brought along (Seth), it would have been an ideal time to find one of those big ones. Alas, we didn't, but we had a nice hike through a part of the forest we don't usually visit, and thanks to my dead-eye pathfinding skills, we ended up back at our shelter, only a few steps from the truck. Though it was a bit early, I suggested we enjoy our lunch because I had a big hike planned as our next chore, and I wanted to be fortified. I'll tell you all about that tomorrow. Missouri calendar:

• Barred owls are nesting.
• Wood ducks nest around wooded ponds and backwaters -- time to put up nest boxes.

Today in Missouri history:

• David Rice Atchison, Senator from Missouri and President Pro Tempore of the U.S. Senate, serves as President of the United States for one day. Many consider this a specious claim.

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