Day-trippin’
By: J. David Chapman/August 11, 2022
There is not much I like more than messing around on boats. This has been a great summer aboard “Doctor’s Orders” located at Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees. However, in the heat of the summer, on some weekends Julie and I just want to get out of the sun and heat and do something a little different. We call them day trips.
Day trips for us are when we can leave early in the morning and be within an hour of our first stop and after that another stop and so on and so forth. This past weekend was just one of those weekends. We left our Grand Lake house on Monkey Island early and made our first stop – the Grand Falls natural waterfalls in Joplin, Missouri. This popular swimming and fishing spot located on Shoal Creek is a must-stop if you are in the area and less than a one-hour drive from Grand Lake.
After a quick selfie, we were off to one of our favorite lunch spots on Shoal Creek in the small town of Tipton Ford, Missouri. This historic restaurant is called Undercliff Grill & Bar and was once a general store operated by an entrepreneur named Ab McConnel. Along a set of railroad tracks and the Shoal Creek, Ab named his store The Under Cliff. He literally built the store into and under the cliffs right into the rocks. The restaurant today is still located into the same cliff, but has a wonderful covered deck and live music on weekends.
After lunch, with the temperature soaring around 100 degrees, it is time for our last stop on this day trip. Just 37 miles away from the Undercliff restaurant, we found the coolest place in the region – Bluff Dwellers Cave in Noel, Missouri. The cave naturally maintains a temperature between 56-60 degrees. The cave was first explored by owner Arthur Browning in 1925 and opened to public tours in 1927. Today, the family carries on the tradition and conducts the tours seven days a week year-round. This is the longest cave in McDonald County, taking about an hour for the guided tour, and there is also a gift shop and museum on site.
With the Grand Falls waterfall, lunch at the Undercliff Grill & Bar, and tour of the Bluff Dwellers Cave behind us, it was time for the one-hour return trip back for an evening swim in the Sleepy Hollow Cove on Monkey Island, Grand Lake.
J. David Chapman is a professor of finance and real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu).