I am very thankful my parents took me hiking as a kid. I enjoyed it when I was young (for example, this photo of a young me hiking at Fraser’s Hill in Malaysia) and I enjoy it now (my Mom and I visited Fraser’s Hill again a few years ago).
Recently I enjoyed visiting Alley Spring Mill and hiking the overlook trail (a 2 km loop trail) near Eminence, Missouri.
The Alley Spring Mill is in the Ozark National Scenic Riverway (part of the National Park system). The mill itself looks wonderful next to the pond and also has some interesting details inside.
Corn and wheat was loaded at the ground level of the building and moved up to the top via the tiny buckets driven by the water wheel. Then the grain was filtered and ground using the water wheel as the source of power (moving up via the mini bucket elevators and down shoots to the machines on the ground level in sequence).