Log Yard Campground
A Park Service backcountry campground and year-round boat ramp at River Mile 37 on the Current River: six reservable sites, a vault toilet, and some of the darkest night skies in the park.
Best Places to Visit in the Ozarks for a Quiet Escape
Some places stay quiet even in July: the spring at the end of the gravel road, the overlook nobody signs well. These are the guide's low crowd places, for when the point is the quiet itself.
Klepzig Mill
Walter Klepzig's little turbine mill still stands in the shut-in canyon of Rocky Creek, unsigned and easy to pass by, at the end of a dirt road or a hike from Rocky Falls.
Cardareva Bluff Natural Area
A 95-acre natural area where a dolomite bluff rises about 500 feet above the Current River, split between the Park Service and the Conservation Department, met best from a float down from Powder Mill or a map-and-compass walk along the bluff top.
Miller Community Lake
A small, quiet conservation lake east of Van Buren with a concrete ramp for electric-motor boats, a mile-long trail around the water, picnic areas at two parking lots, and bass, bluegill, catfish, and redear sunfish.
Peck Ranch Conservation Area
Missouri's elk country: a roughly 23,000-acre conservation area near Winona with a self-guided elk viewing driving tour that starts at the area office, a viewing deck over a beaver pond, primitive camping, Ozark Trail miles, and four natural areas, at the end of about seven miles of gravel road.
Pinewoods Lake Recreation Area
A 31-acre Forest Service fishing lake just off Highway 60 west of Ellsinore, with a barrier-free floating pier, a single-lane concrete ramp for electric-motor boats, a flat 1.3-mile trail around the water, and a picnic pavilion that holds groups of up to 75.
Tunnel Bluff Woods Natural Area
A 288-acre natural area on the lower Current River with old-growth sycamore bottomland and a natural dolomite arch in the east-bank bluff, reached on foot from a signed pull-off on Forest Service Road 3140 west of Grandin, or by floating across from Gooseneck.
Greer Spring
Missouri's second largest spring bursts from a cave mouth and a boiling stream bed at the bottom of a wooded ravine, reached by a 0.9-mile trail off Highway 19, then runs 1.25 miles to double the Eleven Point River.
Falling Spring Mill
A spring pours from a cave opening in a bluff and drops about 15 feet into a millpond beside a small 1927-1929 mill and an 1851 log homestead cabin, in a rustic Forest Service picnic ground south of Winona.
Turner Mill and Spring
A 25-foot steel mill wheel stands in the branch of Turner Spring on the north bank of the Eleven Point River, with a day-use picnic area and launch on the north side and a rustic campground and concrete launch facing it across the water.
Rocky Creek Conservation Area
More than 38,000 acres of oak, hickory, and shortleaf pine in scattered Shannon County tracts, introduced by a five-mile driving tour through a pine-oak woodland restoration project south of Eminence, with nine miles of the Ozark Trail and primitive camping.
Powder Mill Campground
A small Park Service campground and river landing on the Current River at the Highway 106 bridge: eight basic sites in an open field, a year-round restroom, and trails running to Blue Spring and the Ozark Trail.
Powder Mill Cave Natural Area
A closed cave with an open threshold: a short path from a Highway 106 pull-off leads to the entrance of a nearly nine-mile cave, where a spring branch runs out of the dark and endangered Indiana bats spend the winter.