Missouri State Parks: Hawn

I was sitting in my apartment, looking at my Christmas tree, dreaming of warmth and camping and spending time outside when it hit me: I never wrote my post on my experiences at Hawn State Park! So, I will reminisce of the warmth of July and the camping trip my fiance and I took to celebrate my big 2-5. 

This was my second birthday in a row that J and I spent the weekend camping, and I have to say, I rather love this new tradition. He let's me plan where I want to go and I make the reservations and then we pack up and go! It is a pretty wonderful deal. 

Hawn State Park is outside of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri and is simply beautiful. 

Pickle Creek

Anyone who ever tries to claim Missouri is not beautiful has never been to Southern Missouri. Though, to be honest, that is not even the only area that is breathtaking. If you haven't noticed yet, I sort of love Missouri. 

Anyway. We loved stopping at a winery near the state park we went to last year, so we decided to do that again this year. Lucky for us, Ste. Gen has some amazing wineries and quite a few to pick from. We had already visited several earlier in the spring when visiting a friend in Farmington, so I did some research to see which wineries that we had not been to ever were near to Hawn State Park.

Answer: Watertower Winery

I am kinda obsessed...

Best discovery ever. Let me tell ya. Found this place and it was gorgeous with green hills and vineyard in background. There was a great indoor sitting area where you can taste their wine choices AND Fridays during the summer they had free brats and hotdogs. So we found some wine we liked and bought a few bottles (and of course opened one to enjoy while we were there) and walked out back to the patio area to enjoy the shockingly not that hot of July evening. 

Just...I can't...

Needless to say, I did not want to leave. And I have been wanting to go back there ever since. I cannot wait until Spring when we can go back there and to my other favorite winery, The Cave Vineyard.

So, we then made our way to Hawn and found our campsite that I had reserved. While, I will always hate the need to do campsite reservations, I must say, the State Parks have a newer feature that I am loving. You can look at each reservable site and see how far away it is from the shower house, how steep of a slope there is, and even shows a picture of it so you can see the surrounding area. Well, let me tell you. I sat there clicking on every dang spot to find the flattest site in the most shade that had some semblance of privacy and I found the perfect spot. Best addition to the website ever! 

All Those Trees and Space!

The campground hosts were immediately incredibly kind. They let us buy wood even though the woodshed was already closed for the night and when they saw my car didn't have room to carry the wood (since we had not unpacked at all yet) the man volunteered to load up his little golf cart and meet us over at our site. My lap very much appreciated not having to hold all the bundles of wood on it.

He offered this service, to take wood bundles and bags of ice over to you, all weekend. I must say, it was quite nice to see campground hosts who obviously loved what they were doing and just wanted to make your trip the best it could be. Those are the people who make me dream about being a campground host when I am retired (Hear that, dear fiance?). 

Saturday we spent hiking around Pickle Creek, which I had been told from various people was a great trail to do. They did not lie. It is a short hike, but such a fun one to take. 

Doing some Explorin'

The hike gives ample opportunities to let you go down to the creek and get in if you want to. We opted to stay out of the water, but we did jump from rock to rock and tree trunks. I highly recommend doing this trail to anyone who might be in Hawn. 

With it being such a short hike, we easily could have done other trails also, but we opted to go back to our campsite and just relax and read. I had not had the chance to just lounge around and read in far too long, and I loved being able to do that outdoors. After doing that for a few hours, I wanted to look around the walk-in campsites to see if it was something I wanted to try at some point. They looked nice, but not quite as nice as the ones at Johnson Shut-Ins. But, it did lead to another area to explore the creek and bluffs. 

I could not be happier with the weather we had that weekend. With the amazing weather it meant it was a bit crowded. The park is only an hour or so away from St. Louis, which makes it an easy place to go to for the weekend. We had several families and groups near us, but everyone was super respectful of quite hours.

My only regret was not being able to go to the ranger talk event that went on Saturday. One of these days we will get ourselves organized enough that we have dinner cooked and consumed before those talks occur so we can go to one. We did not want to rush, so instead we stayed at our campsite and enjoyed our food, had a beer and sat around our fire. 

Yummm

All in all, I would highly recommend Hawn State Park to anyone looking for a park to camp at or even for a day trip of hiking! 

Missouri State Parks: Cuivre River

Recently (as in, say within the last two weeks...) my sister and I were feeling the need to go to another State Park to go hiking. This time we decided on Cuivre River in Troy, MO. That is about a 40 minute drive from St. Charles, so definitely a do-able day trip destination for anyone around the St. Louis area. 

Oh, hey. That's me chilling outside the VC.

I honestly cannot remember if I had ever been there before this trip or not. Our parents took us camping all over the state (and country) and I really wish I had a list of all the places I've been during my life. Alas I have to go off the memory of my siblings to get that information. My sister did not think we had ever been there as a family, but she and her husband had camped there one summer because it was the only place in Missouri they could find with open campsites that weren't all reserved. I will post about my feelings on reserved camping spots another time...

So I was all for exploring a new to me state park! The first thing we did when we made it inside the park was stop at the visitor center. We needed maps and suggestions of trails to hike. I think the woman behind the desk slightly under-estimated our hiking abilities because my sister had to lug the baby (PX) around. She has a nice carrier that can have PX either on her front or her back. Anyway, she suggested some short, not so difficult trails for us to do. We looked around the VC, used the restroom and then went on our way to find the trailhead we wanted to start at. 

PX was super, super amused by this random bird in the VC

Let me say this. The visitor center was alright. Not the worst I have been in, but by far not the best either. It could use some sprucing up and updating, but it does what it needs to do. It get info to the visitors and also teaches some about Missouri and the environment. I understand that budgets are not entirely overflowing right now anyway, especially for the Department of Natural Resources. I assume if a State Park were to get an updated VC it would be somewhere with high traffic- like Onondaga or Lake of the Ozarks (at least I imagine those are popular destinations). I can forgive all of that. 

HOWEVER. 

Is it really all that difficult to have well placed, clearly marked signs around the park so the visitors can actually find their way around the dang place?! We thought we were going the correct direction and then suddenly were outside the park limits. We got turned around so many times. The roads had street signs but the maps were not marked with any sort of street names on them. Not. Helpful. We had issues finding our way to the lake, which should not have been as difficult as it turned out to be. 

We finally made it, parked the car, got PX all set up in the baby carrier and were off on the first trail. This was a trail that looped around the lake. Very pretty view. 

Trail around the lake

 See? Very pretty, indeed. The day was warm but incredibly windy and the wind was even worse next to the water. My advice if you hike this trail is to wear some good sun glasses to help protect your eyes. With nothing to break the wind, we had to deal with sand and dirt being blown all over the place. We made it about half a mile and said dirt made its way into my sister's eye. Not fun. So we turned back for the car, put PX back in his car seat and moved on to a different trail that was in the woods. 

Well. The map did not make it totally clear where to go to get onto the trail. We suddenly were in the campground area. I asked one of the workers (not sure if she was a campground host or naturalist or what) where that trail was located. She pointed towards the electric campsite, told us to go that direction and we would find two different trails. So we went. What she didn't mention was there is no parking over there so again we left that area to find a different trailhead for the trail. By this point we were both frustrated and hungry (or at least I was hungry) and we had only had a mile hike. It was starting to feel like a bust of a trip.

We found the start of the trail and started on our way. It was nice! We were among the trees, the wind had calmed down and the scenery was pretty. We managed to get lost while hiking though and ended up in this creepy area with a bunch of empty cabins. We took a wrong turn on the trail and then we lost the trail so I am fairly certain we were off-trailing it for a bit. I didn't feel so bad though. Yeah, you should stay on the trails, but in Missouri you are not going to do a whole lot of damage. Unlike that time in Utah when I did 500+ years worth of damage to the ground by accidentally getting off the trail...

Apparently people need to mark trails better, jeeze. 

To be fair, MO State Parks' trails are normally really well marked and it is not an issue to find your way around. For some reason this trail was not always marked clearly, and we were not the only people we ran into that day who had similar issues.

See? Well marked part of trail!

Not so well marked part of trail...

All in all the day turned out well. We got about 6 miles of hiking in. Not as much as we had hoped but with all the getting lost that occurred, I was okay with 6 miles. Plus by the end of it I felt pretty blah from low blood sugar so I was totally ready to head into Troy and find some dinner. We accidentally skipped lunch. 

I was not in love with Cuivre River but would totally be willing to come back. And I do want to try camping there as well.

I really need to come up with some sort of rating system for the parks I visit...

Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and 70 and I am off work so fingers crossed I will get lots of biking or hiking in. I need it. Lately all my days off have been rainy and gross. 

Until next time, happy trails!