Walking/Hiking Trails – Page 10

Shawnee National Forest

Garden of the Gods

First stop on a beautiful 3 day early spring trip. It’s sunny and clear and only a little cool. The trails are busy with families and hikers enjoying the chance to be outdoors.

Cave In Rock State Park

Breakfast on the deck overlooking the river. A little cold for eating outside at first, but sunshine and coffee and thick, cheesy, omelets, quickly chased the chill away.

Battery Rock

Rim Rock National Recreation Trail

Final early morning walk, before heading back home again.

Babler State Park

Sunshine tease,

Even warmer than predicted

A quick after work escape to search for signs of spring

Columbia Bottom Conservation Area

The trail is rugged and often dissolved. Frozen in time by flooding in 2019 and Covid in 2020. Muddy from the recent snowmelt, it’s sometimes hard to navigate even where it’s still open. But the sun is out, and the breeze is only slightly cool, and the river tumbles the final chunks of ice to their southern doom.

We stumble on a back trail cove that looks like a science fiction movie set. A barren eerie landscape huddles in mysterious post- apocalyptic webbing. This would be the scene were the idiot stars walked casually in and were eaten by whatever sprang from beneath the shrouded brush. So, of course, we did the same.

Creve Coeur Lake

It’s feels almost like spring after so many shockingly cold days. Fourteen, I think they said, days below freezing. That’s not something that happens around here much. The snow is almost gone, but the waterfall and lake are solid ice, plant life captured in their grasp.

Sunset Park

Thick, soft, cornmeal mush of snow

Gliding ice pack remnants,

Bird song,

Barely hushed,

By muffled traffic hum

Hickory Woods

Frosty morning, Covid style snow day. No in-person classes today, but I’ll be back online in an hour or so. There’s time for a quick walk. I’m not sure when I leave just how quick it will be, expecting I may want to turn back before the end of the road.

It’s cold, and still spitting a little, but it doesn’t feel that bad. I’m well bundled and the sidewalk is snowy enough not to be too slick.

I last about an hour in a peaceful blur, my glasses much too fogged over to wear.

Wapelhorst Park

Ball fields and playgrounds and a water park, seem to be the main focus here, but the little pond is beautiful.

It looks like it’s much more extensive that my interest in staying out in the icy winds today. I circled the pond and the wooden overlook, and the sculpture of the laughing little boy playing with his dog.

I doubt if it’s anywhere near so quiet in the midst of summer sports season, but still a peaceful escape.

Wild Acres Park

I left my computer at school today, and my ipad, and attendance book, and class journal.

First day back and I’m already done?

Not really. It was a pretty good day overall. The new kids seem nice. The ones just returning from full time virtual adjusted agreeably to all the new covid restrictions.

There hasn’t been a day since we went back in October, that I haven’t hauled the whole pile home every day, just in case there was any reason I couldn’t get back.

But the sun is shining, my room is set up, there’s nothing to grade yet, and it’s supposed to rain for the rest of the week.

I didn’t even recognize the name of the park, I just punched in a search for something nearby. Once I pulled in, I realized I had been here before, watching my nephews fish.

Only slightly off a busy road, it’s not really quiet. By my second pass on the trail that winds around the pond, though, the traffic had faded to a background muffle and birdsong has drifted in.

Springfield Conservation Nature Center

The day after Christmas, it’s sunny and cold in Springfield. The nature trails are surprisingly quiet, the parking lot only about half filled in the slanting wintery light.