Alley Spring, Ozark National Scenic Riverways

Cigarette butts are litter too.

DO NOT GIVE CANDY TO RANGERS! They are not in costume. That is their uniform. They are not trick-or-treating. They're just checking on our projects. Pleas...e do not feed our park rangers candy. Here's why: They are not kids, so technically they are no longer qualified to accept Halloween candy from anyone. (It's against trick-or-treating code, and we're big sticklers for the rules.) The sugar highs. Don't even get us started on the sugar highs. Trying to wrangle a roomful of rowdy rangers isn't just alliteration; it's a nightmare. Then they crash, and our whole ranger team is out for the afternoon. The rangers end up getting really sticky. Ants come around. All of our equipment gets sticky. Pages get ripped out of books. Wild animals wander out of the forest trying to lick their fingers. It's just an all-around messy state of affairs. You'll end up with rangers following you around all daywhich is helpful if you like useful information but less helpful if you like your personal space. If you hand out candy to one ranger, then you have to have enough for all the rangers (on shift or not). You don't want to show favoritism, do you? As a precaution against the spread of COVID-19, you may want to avoid handing out candy this year altogether. Real talk: If you do participate in trick-or-treating or other Halloween-related activities, exercise caution. Visit CDC for more on keeping yourself and others safe this Halloween: cdc.gov//2019-nc/daily-life-coping/holidays/halloween.html

Alley Spring last week.

Today is International Archaeology Day! If you’ve ever been curious about how or why archeologists do what they do, then tune in this week as we bring you a ser...ies of posts about archeology in our park. The photo you see here shows former park staff in the field photographing artifacts from archeological work conducted at Alley Mill in 1992. We’re lucky to currently have both an Archeologist and a Museum Curator on staff at Ozark, something that not all National Parks have! Our park archeologist, Morgan, conducts field work in the park year-round while Jessica, our curator, manages our museum collection. An archeologist must be consulted before any type of ground disturbing work is done in the park which can include construction of new buildings, creating new trails, water line repair, and soil sampling just to name a few! If you ever find an artifact in a National Park, don’t take it home with you. Please leave it where you found it, record the location, and tell a ranger! Artifacts are small pieces of a larger puzzle that contribute to our knowledge of the past - if you remove some of the pieces, archeologists can’t see the whole picture.

This is a joke. This is only a joke. No Geographical Insinuations are to be construed by this joke. Comments have been turned off to thwart the humor impaired.