Bennett Spring State Park, Missouri
Our stop at Bennett Spring State Park was a bit disappointing. The spring itself was pretty but as we soon discovered, the park was infested with ticks not to mention being fairly thick with poison ivy, which as you may or may not recall, I avoid at all costs due to some serious reactions. We opted to do their longest trail – the 7.5 mile Natural Tunnel Trail – and had set out only to encounter unavoidable dense poison ivy and tall, thick brush crowding the path. The latter was not a problem of course until we started getting bitten by ticks as we were walking. By the end of the hike I had pulled forty-seven ticks off me. In less than three hours. Tom got quite a good number attached too and this was all before the hike was over; we both had a ridiculous number of bites. Poor Abby ended up with well over a hundred ticks and was subjected to five days of having her fur tweezed out over the course of multiple hours as we tried to remove the dozens that had embedded themselves under her skin. The tunnel, at 296 feet long, 16 feet high, and 50 feet wide, was substantial, and we did see to turtles and a snake, but this stop ended up not being worth it for us.
Bennett Spring, Bennett Spring State Park, Missouri
Turtle #1, Natural Tunnel Trail, Bennett Spring State Park, Missouri
Turtle #2, Natural Tunnel Trail, Bennett Spring State Park, Missouri
Natural Tunnel Trail, Bennett Spring State Park, Missouri
Natural Tunnel Trail, Bennett Spring State Park, Missouri
Natural Tunnel Trail, Bennett Spring State Park, Missouri
Natural Tunnel Trail, Bennett Spring State Park, Missouri
Natural Tunnel Trail, Bennett Spring State Park, Missouri
Natural Tunnel Trail, Bennett Spring State Park, Missouri
Copperhead, worse than any amount of ticks.
47?! That’s so crazy! I grew up less than an hour from here and have had 3 in one summer at the most! They much LOVE your blood! 😉 It’s a pretty area though and you got some gorgeous photos!
I know, Paige, it was nuts! 47 was just on ME, DURING the hike, not Tom or the dog, or what we found after the hike!! We were there the first week of May – is it hatching season or something? I know you’re from the Springfield area and when we were headed that way I looked up which parks you had been to because I remembered all your beautiful photos of the area…. But then friends of Tom’s suggested Bennett Springs so we went there. I can’t believe the most you’ve gotten was 3!!
Forty seven?! Wow. We found three when we camped in Missouri and thought that was bad. Yikes!
Any tick is one too many, Anna Lou. We pulled off many more after the hike but I stopped counting… We thought it lucky that we (the humans) got away with only about ten bites per person.
I haven’t done much hiking in areas where there are ticks and have never had one bite me. I think I might actually freak out. And forty seven just sounds insane! Yuck!
I’ve hiked in some pretty tick-dense areas before but I have NEVER encountered anything like this!