Ozark Trail Part I: Spiders

Yesterday, I took a long hike on the Ozark Trail’s longest section, the Courtois (pronounced “Code-a-way”).

Although I’d like to write an entire blog on the section of trail that I hiked, for now I’d like to show you some of the arachinids who were hanging out on their webs across my trail.

Itsy Bitsy Spider, photo by smalltowngirl

I don’t know what I was thinking hiking in August, but my hike was hot, humid, and spider-infested.

A few hundred feet into the trail, the spiderwebs started to become problematic. Over and over again, I felt their sticky threads wrap around my arms, legs, or face, and found myself swatting at the air like a maniac, trying to get the webs off of my skin.

I picked up a long, thin stick, which I carried like a sword in front of my body, trying to knock spiderwebs down.  Along I plodded, slicing my stick-sword through the air, a full-blown war waged between myself and these eight-legged creepy crawlers.

This gigantic spider, with a body well larger than my thumb, was intimidating. I didn’t want to make him mad at me, so I left his web intact and asked him to please not bother me as I deftly snuck beneath his web.

Big spider, photo by smalltowngirl

Spiders were everywhere. To say I saw hundreds of them is not an exaggeration. I saw red ones, black ones and gray ones; big ones little ones and itsy bitsy ones.

For good measure, I took a few shots of some daddy long legs, hanging upside down in a cave.  Daddy long legs are arachnids, although they aren’t techinically spiders. I thought this last shot rounded out my spider photo collection nicely.

long legs, photo by smalltowngirl