Mid-Winter Waiting

I feel like this post should be sub-titled, "Praying for warmth again."

It is that time of year, folks. And this winter has not been kind. Today the temperature was in the 50s and I was trapped indoors all day long working. Tomorrow when I have the morning free, it will be 12 degrees. 12. That...is sick. 

This is what I cannot stand. The constant back and forth of weather. Feels like Spring one day. Eight inches of snow the next day. Sub-zero temps after that. Oh hey, 60 degrees.

No wonder everyone is sick. 

Since the last post I have managed to find a few decent weathered days when I had free time and the ground was not covered in snow to go hiking. One of those days was actually quite nice. It was in the 50s, sunny and not windy. The other one was only mid-30s but I decided that was good enough. After wind chills of negative degrees, mid-30s feels quite pleasant. Plus, its all about the layers! 

I have found a new favorite place to hike courtesy of one of my good friends at work. I have fallen in love with the Chubb Trail, which is located near Lone Elk Park. The trail also connects to Castlewood State Park. Both days I hiked here, I was there for close to three hours. It was not nearly enough time. I am itching to get back when I have no time restraints and can spend a good chunk of the day exploring.

Look at the beautiful Winter Sky

My adventure urges have been building up and getting rather intense lately. I need Spring to happen soon. Or for my body to learn how to handle the cold.

New challenges of 2014:

Race to 500 miles against the sister. Which of us shall make it there first?! (insert dramatic music here..)

Bike the entire Katy Trail at the end of May with my buddy, Q. 

Explore more, learn more, be active more. 

The big ol' 2013 Summer list fizzled because we may have been aiming a bit high with all the goals. This seems simpler and totally achievable. 

Bring it on, 2014. My Adventures await!

   

Missouri State Parks: Lake of the Ozarks

This past weekend I went "camping" at Lake of the Ozarks State Park. I say "camping" because it was in cabins, which in my opinion is not actually camping, but I am not entirely sure what else to call it. We cooked over a campfire. We froze our butts off in the freezing (literally freezing) temperatures and we had to walk to the restroom/shower house. This all sounds like camping. But we slept in cabins that (thankfully) had heat and electricity. 

It wasn't entirely glamping because there still was not much that would be glamorous about what we did but still I feel like hardcore campers would not view this as camping.

Anyway. I digress.

I went to the Ozarks State Park for the first time ever with J and 18 other college friends for their 5th annual friend Thanksgiving there. 

I do not have a ton of experience in camping/cabin camping in cold temperatures and I have very little tolerance for the cold, so this weekend was a little rough. But so worth it and very much needed. 

The day time temperature barely got over 35 and the evenings were sometimes lower than 20, but as long as you layered properly and stayed close to the amazingly huge fire, it really was not too bad.

I loved the cabins and I hope I can get my siblings to go there sometime in the Spring or Summer for a family "campout". Each cabin holds up to 6 people with 3 beds. One bed is a futon style and is on the first floor. There is a ladder that leads up to a loft area where 2 more beds are located. Each cabin has a kitchen table area and counter space. There is also a heater that works decently well, but also a fire pot belly stove. Each night we would take embers from the big fire outside to get all the cabins' stoves lit. The state park provides wood for each stove and our cabin made the rule of if you got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, you had to put in another piece of wood in the stove. 

Thank god, I never have to pee in the middle of the night because I have a feeling I would have fallen down the ladder trying to get to the bathroom and would have somehow manages to ruin the fire or not close the door well enough and make smoke fill the cabin. This did not happen, thankfully.

I wish I had pictures of the cabins and the surrounding areas, but I somehow managed to not take any. Each cabin had a fire pit with a grill like most campsites have and 2 large picnic tables. We did all our cooking over the fire pit (foil packs, deer meat, chili for one night and a full Thanksgiving feast, including a turkey the other night) and massively relied on the fire for warmth.

It was so cold the veggies and dip in the veggie tray froze. And the beer froze. And all the water bottles froze.

This weekend made the "cold" temps while camping with my family in Johnson Shut-Ins feel like balmy summer night temperatures. 

I highly suggest these cabins to anyone who wants to spend time in a state park with a group of people but camping in tents is not the best option for you. 

I need to go back to this State Park to actually get a good feel of it still. Since it was so cold we did not do a whole lot of exploring around, unfortunately. I did some hiking around the lake, but that trail was in the cabin area of the park. Besides driving around, I don't even know much about this park, but I totally plan on returning to learn more.

We did spend part of Saturday at Ha Ha Tonka State Park, but I will talk about that and include pictures in another post. That is a park that is completely worth checking out. 

And what is a camping trip without stopping at a winery? We stopped at St. James Winery on our way back to St. Louis, which was a spur of the moment stop. Car trips are only fun if you randomly make unplanned stops.

I am now up to 3 state parks that I have stayed over night in this year and 7 all together that I have been in. Not too shabby. 

National Parks Shut Their Gates

Today, October 1, 2013 is the 123rd birthday of Yosemite National Park. 

And no one can celebrate it. 

No one can even go to the National Park's websites to look at all the amazing parks, such as Yosemite. 

The gates are closed. No one is allowed to enter. People currently camping at any National Park have two days to leave.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what has been eating away at me all day long because of the Government shut down. Earlier my sister posted on my facebook wall, "Happy birthday, NASA (sorry the government won't let you do your job)." and I replied back with, "Happy birthday, Yosemite! Sorry no one can party with you." Now, this is not a political blog, so I am not going to go into my ideologies and leaning and thoughts on how things should be run, but the National Parks being closed breaks my heart. To pieces. 

I follow National Parks News (@NPCA) on Twitter and have been reading all of their updates all day long and I just keep getting sadder.

I know, it is silly. It isn't like I have any NP trips planned out right now. All I have to go visit nearby would be Grant's Cabin or the Arch. But, so many people on Twitter are talking about their plans to go visit the parks and how now they can't. And that is just sad. I know how amazing those visits are. I know how special spending time with your friends and/or family in those breathtaking parks can be. I literally day dream on an almost daily basis of which park I want to go to next. 

To me, the National Parks are the happiest places on earth. And their gates are closed. How depressing is that? 

I am curious about those who did have big plans, what they are going to do now that their plans are ruined. I am crossing my fingers that this Shutdown is brief and everything will be re-opened shortly so it causes minimal harm to people's plans and to all of the people depending on parks being open for their jobs. The parks give employment to so many people between rangers and naturalists and people working in the lodges and food services. Then there are all the small businesses in the towns surrounding National Parks that need those visitors to stay open. My sister and I a few summers back took a (nearly) 5000 miles roadtrip out west where we visited and camped in many National Parks. We were one of those people who went to small super markets and stores outside the parks to re-stock supplies. We strolled the streets of Estes Park and went out to eat and played mini-golf and I bought a ring and book. We would not have done those things we weren't there to explore Rocky Mountain National Park.  

I know this blog post is not my usual type. I am not giving input on a particular location I visited. I am not sharing my likes and dislikes on how a camping trip went. I am upset about the National Parks and needed to share these thoughts. I hope and pray that things get resolved quickly for everyone so people can go back to their jobs, back to their parks and back to their adventures. 

100 Missouri Miles: Reaching the Finish Line

For the past week and a half I have been kicking myself in the rear to get my 100 Missouri Miles finished. As I have mentioned, and as you can see from my summer 2013 list, my original plan was to achieve 500 miles this summer biking/walking/hiking. The governor then created the 100 Missouri Miles challenge, and I had to join that as well. 

Well, today I have finished that 100 Missouri Miles goal! I walked my last 4.5 miles on the Meramec Greenway Trail with J today. He knew I wanted to be finished by Sunday (today) and I was feeling super lazy and bleh. He said he would walk with me and he chose this trail, because as much as I love the Grant's Trail, I had been on it 3 or 4 times in the past week and a half and needed something different. 

It was strange. It was the perfect Fall day today with sunshine and mid-70s for temperatures. But for some reason today I could not move as quickly as I normally could and my stomach was cramping up so I had to sit on a bench a few times. I felt incredibly lame, but I knew I needed to finish those miles today (the actual deadline for 100 miles is the end of the year, but this was my personal deadline since I epically failed with the 500 miles..). He was great and didn't push me and let me rest when I needed to.

Folks, this was just 4.5 miles. Normally that is not an issue at all for me, so I don't know what was up besides I stupidly ate a big lunch and then decided to go finish these miles. Also I felt a tad bit dehydrated. 

But I did it! I made a goal by my deadline. 

And now I get a medal.

I didn't even know I got a prize for finishing this challenge until about mile 80-something. That means the majority of the miles were just me being motivated by myself, which I find impressive. 

It will take a week or so for the medal to get here, but when it does, I will post a picture of it.

I am now challenging myself to do another 100 miles by the end of 2013. This will be a harder goal for me because I do not do well with cold weather. That just means I need to get as many miles completed while the nice Fall weather is around as I can.

The Grant's Trail

Being back on The Grant's Trail is like being home. This is the original trail that I spent countless hours on. This is the trail that made me push myself when I was younger, to keep biking, to get stronger. 

When I was younger (we're talking a good ten years ago) I would bike from my house to the trail, which was about half a mile away. Somedays I would just bike the section nearest our house and back. Other days I would use the trail to meet up with a girl friend of mine to walk around Grant's Farm. Then there were the days I felt like pushing myself and would bike the whole thing.

Turns out the trail is only 8 miles long, one way. 

Back then it seemed so much longer. Regardless, this trail is awesome for someone wanting a paved, mostly flat trail to bike, walk, run, rollerblade on. 

Yesterday I was laying around my apartment after getting off work and I needed a kick in my booty to do something active. A friend told me to go walk on the trail. I changed into active clothes and got into my car. 

I technically live close enough to the trail that I could walk/bike there, but I am not so comfortable with that anymore because I live on Gravois. A bit too busy of a road for my liking. I drove to Whitecliff Park near the fields where the Grant's Farm Clydesdale horses roam and parked. From there I walked the short walk to one of the trailheads. 

I opted to go towards Grant's Farm because I think that section of the trail is much prettier.  

Prettier, sure. But super buggy. I guess that is what you get for walking later in the afternoon. Now that dusk comes sooner, I feel like the bugs do too. Or it could just be a buggy trail, that is entirely possible as well. 

You pass by Grant's Cabin while on this section of the trail, which I still need to go visit and get my National Park's passport stamped there. Missouri does not have many options for NP stamps, and I already have one from the Arch. I have no excuse now since I live so close to the cabin not to go visit. 

The people on Grant's Trail seem very friendly, which is nice. I never know if I should make awkward eye contact with people on the trail, or if I should just smile or say hi. I don't want to throw someone out of their groove by interpreting them with a hello. I, however, always say hi back to people who greet me.

I really need to get my bike back from my sister's house so I can start biking on the Grant's Trail again. It feels good to be back!  

Missouri State Parks: Johnson's Shut-Ins

Located in Lesterville, MO, Johnson's Shut-Ins is probably one of the top 5 most popular State Parks in Missouri. Do not quote me on that, I am completely making that up, but I really would be shocked if it weren't one of the most popular in Missouri. Here's why:

1) It is completely new and updated. Back in Dec 2005, the Taum Sauk Reservoir had a major failure which resulted in over a billion gallons of water from The Black River flooding the entire park. Read about the flood and how the park changed here. The campground was totally destroyed and had been located near the river in the floor plains. It is now across the highway in a new area. And it is nice. These campgrounds opened up 4 years after the flood.

2) It is nature's own water park! How can that not draw a humongous crowd?! Playing in rivers is fun. Playing in a river full of boulders creating waterfalls, pools, and awesome rapids? Amazing. Dangerous if you aren't careful, sure, but amazing. 

3) Location. It is not a far drive from Saint Louis (2 hours) so it can easily be a day trip if you are not wanting to camp. If you are "day camping" here, though, be warned. It gets crowed fast in the summer months so come early to stake out your spot. The Shut-ins parking lot only allows for 100 cars so plan accordingly. If camping, it is close to Elephant Rock State Park and near Taum Sauk State Park. Elephant Rock SP does not have camping, but the hiking there is amazing. Taum Sauk also has some of the prettiest hiking in Missouri, plus you get to be on the highest peak in Missouri. 

Gotta catch 'em all! 

My sister (R), her husband (M) and the baby (PX) and I just went here this past weekend to camp. This is where I wanted to camp for my birthday weekend campout, so I am glad I got to go there before the camping season ended! This was PX's first EVER camping trip! He is not even 2 years old yet, but he is quite the adventurer. He loves being outside and playing in the dirt and running around, so this weekend was perfect for him. 

We opted to camp in the "walk-in sites" which are located in loop 5 within the park. We did these because by the time my sister went online to reserve the campsite, these were all that were left for the weekend. I was shocked since I would have thought the school year starting would make camping on weekends easier. However, this ended up being the best thing ever, and I would recommend these walk-in spots to anyone who needs a basic campsite (no electricity, no water, no sewer hook-up). 

We got to our part of loop 5 and the showerhouse was right across from the parking area. The facilities consisted of 2 shower stalls and 2 bathroom stalls. Not the best for the 8 campsites the bathroom was for, but not too bad either. The only issue was this was also for the special use area, which happened to have 20+ Boy Scouts between the ages of 11 and 16 and their parents. Oh, well. We never had to wait in line all too long. We purposely chose the closest campsite to the parking lot that we could, number 513. The only closer one was the handicap site, 514. The walk to the bathroom was about 250 yards. Not bad. 

We saw a push cart in the parking lot. It was like a giant wheel barrow with bike wheels on it. This thing was genius and kudos to you, Johnson's Shut-ins for providing such an amazing tool for your campers. We loaded it up and wheeled it to our campsite. The entire walk to our site my sister and I oohed and awed over how beautiful the area was.

Most helpful thing and a happy surprise!

Then we saw our campsite, dear 513. The thing was HUGE! And secluded! And, well, just look. Click on the picture below to make it bigger. 

and

and

We couldn't see any of the other campsites from our campsite. We had tons of space to spread out within the campsite plus they put in wooden deck areas for the tents to go on since the terrain is uneven and rocky. My biggest suggestion to people camping in these campsites would be to bring an air mattress. We only had camping pads and we all had ache and pains from sleeping on a wooden surface. However, the platform was really nice for other reasons. It was awesome not having mud right outside the tent. It gave us a designated area for the tent so we didn't have to search for the most level, best area for the tent. I have camped in the normal basic campground here before and it was nice, but like every other popular state park in MO, you are pretty much on top of each other. This felt so isolated and I will be coming back. 

The visitor center is located in the part of the park where the shut-ins are and it is very nice. It was built after the flood and has all kinds of information on the park, the history, the flood and more. I wish there had been better information on hiking, but for all I know the people working in there had maps behind the front desk. I just never asked. It is a bummer that you are no longer able to walk easily from the campground to the river since it is on the other side of the county highway, but at the same time I appreciate not being in a flood plain. 

We went down to the river and despite not being much above 75 degrees it was crowded! I cannot even imagine how crowded it must be during the hot summer days. Since it wasn't very warm, none of us besides PX had swimsuits on so we more so waded in the water as he played with his bucket and shovel and threw rocks. He loves throwing rocks. 

One complaint: There is a sign as you take the hike from the parking lot to the river and it states No coolers, yada yada yada, and no dogs. In fact, it is a rule for all of the state parks that no dogs can be in state park/historic site buildings, beaches and swim areas. There were so many dogs by the river! Not sure why this bugged me so much, but it did. Oh, well. 

We also spent part of the day at Elephant Rock State Park, but as this post is already getting really long, I will talk about that in another post. 

In conclusion, some things I learned:

1) If camping with kiddos, know that they will get dirty. There is nothing you can do about this. It is just dirt (or fire pit ash for PX) and it will wash out. Just let them get dirty.

2) Walk-in campsites are not as scary as they sound, and now I am super excited to go check out other walk-in sites elsewhere. 

3) If the weather says the weather will have highs of mid 70s and lows in mid 40s, do not stupidly only pack one light jacket. A long sleeve shirt or two would be useful. Maybe a heavier sweatshirt.The nights got really, really cold. I normally hate wearing socks to bed but I was grateful I had packed my wool socks. Those multiple pairs of shorts I brought were a waste and weren't worn at all. 

4) I am ready to put up a fight if necessary. We are all mostly asleep Saturday night when suddenly we heard (human) footsteps stop in front of our campsite. Then turn and go into our area. We then heard rustling. I grab my glasses and my flashlight and jump out of the tent to confront who was in our area (my adrenaline was pumping, I do not normally confront people) because it sounded like they were going through our stuff. But they were no longer there and we concluded they were just grabbing sticks around our space.  

5) Overhearing the conversations of young Boy Scouts is hilarious. "I've got my underwear!" or "You will lift the toilet seats up when you pee." Thank you, Scoutmaster for the sound advice. The rest of us sharing that bathroom with you all really appreciated it. 

Missouri State Parks: St. Francios

I meant to write this post a month ago, but apparently I got rather busy. So here we go.

My boyfriend and I spent my birthday weekend (July 20th weekend) camping at St. Francios State Park. This was my first time camping this summer and my first experience of St. Francios. I was very happily surprised by this park! We reserved a campsite for Friday through Saturday because I have learned the hard way too many times that camping on weekends in Missouri is not possible is you do not have a reservation. I should be excited that our park system is so popular, but I miss the days when you used to be able to spur of the moment plan a camping trip. St. Francios was not even on my list of places I wanted to go to that weekend, but every other place I tried to reserve a spot at was already full. 

Turned out we could have gone camping here without reservations because there were empty spots available in the basic campsite area, but I still would not take the risk of not having a spot. 

I did some research on the super handy state parks website and saw that St. Francios was on a river, so I decided that would be a good option for us since we were going in the middle of July. In Missouri. Which, you know, tends to be hot. The river (The Big River) was nice. The area had a nice beach and the water got deep enough that people were floating but also shallow enough that J and I sat in a few inches of water for awhile and enjoyed the day. However, I must say that I felt a bit overwhelmed with the amount of people (and the quality of people...) that were in the river. It was fine, and fun, minus one family that decided to set off a fire cracker only a few feet away from us. Because, you know, setting off a loud exploding thing is a smart thing to do on sand, around a bunch of people, surrounded by cliff walls. Plus, that is one of the few things that is not allowed in State Parks. 

We went on a hike Saturday morning and it was beautiful! I love hiking new places, and this did not disappoint. It had lots of hills and you had the cross the creek several times. There were a few times I requested we stopped and rest because I got tired. I would love to go back there and do more hiking. 

View of the creek during the hike

The worst part of the camping trip was the rain. It did not rain very long, but it was intense for the hour or so that it did rain, which was not that big of an issue because we just napped during that time. However, it made everything soaked. I felt like I was constantly trying to dry things out. We had gathered wood earlier in the day and it all got really wet, so dinner making was hard. It took us a long time to get the fire going well enough for cooking. We ended up having a late dinner that night (foil packs, yummm) but we snacked on local cheese and sausage that we bought at St. Francios Winery. If you are ever in that area, go to that winery. We stopped there Friday before getting to the park, and it was awesome. We did a wine tasting and bought a few bottles. They sold sausage and cheese from St. Gen, MO. 

This state park does not have much of a visitor center and it does not have a camp store. You can buy fire wood and ice, that's it. There is a Wal-Mart in a nearby town, which we made a run to for those forgotten items. But know that you would not be able to get any items within the state park. 

I will totally go back here and J and I already discussed wanting to go again next year!