Ha Ha Tonka State Park

Ruins of the main building which burned to the ground.  The arches were door ways which are now largely obstructed with debris and growth.

 This is a strange and wonderful setting with ruins of one man's dream and the beauty of nature each complimenting the other.  About an hour and twenty minutes from Columbia it is well worth the visit. Ha Ha Tonka takes some effort to see, since you have to walk, and a trip there takes a bit of planning in order to do it right. 

One of the carriage houses at the entrance.

These pictures are in order of our visit.  We started at the parking lot and walked up past the carriage house.  Then we spent a couple of hours walking around the ruins and then down to the lake and back.  We then left to explore some of the other attractions at the park and came back later in the evening to take advantage of the twilight atmosphere.

This is the start of the Lake Trail which we hiked down to the Lake of the Ozarks itself.

The bottom of the lake trail.  This trail is accessible by boat from this dock.

I wanted to take advantage of the changing light for different visual perspectives.

This is one of the separate trails away from the ruins.

Here we are back at the "castle" ruins to wait for the sun to start going down.  This was our second hike to the location.

You can see it is starting to get dark.

The park closes at dark and there is limited primitive camping.  Also, there are no vendors at the park so you have to carry in anything you will need such as something to eat or drink.  A back pack, and as mentioned earlier some prior planning, makes this a very successful outing.  Highly recommended.