Back in June, our Sunday Adventure Series took us to Don Robinson State park, just a bit south and west of St. Louis. That time, we hiked the Sandstone Canyon Trail, a really cool 4 mile loop. We knew we were missing out on the other trail there, the Labarque Hills Trail, but we didn't have the time. We revisited Don Robinson late today so that we could conquer that one, too.
It's a shorter trail, but boy, is it packed with goodness. The sign said 2.4 miles, but our GPS's said 2.9 by the time we were done...with 498 feet of climbing. And we felt every bit of that climbing. As luck would have it, we made it to the park pretty late in the day, so the sun was low and the wind was kicking. Pretty much a perfect time to see the beauty of the trail.
A pretty random photo of me sitting on some sandstone ledges in the middle of the trail.
The rock formations were awesome. Lots of sandstone and other rock types, shaped by water, wind, and the rest of nature. No way to get it all in one shot. This was a rock plateau that I had to shoot in panorama.
So much climbing. Once we got to the top, it was breath taking. The sun was still filtering through the trees.
Quite a bit of the trail was literally stone. Like it was laid down in a walkway for us.
We kind of thought of the Wizard of Oz in some places, as the trail stretched out in front of us like the yellow brick road. So we followed it!
The sandstone was really the hero of the day. There were too many cool features to get them all, but I knew I had to crawl into this hollow and have the beautiful Mrs K take a pic.
That same hollow was in a long line of formations that were too cool to pass up. I took another panorama. Absolutely a place we will visit again in the winter so we can explore the creeks and valleys.
No comments:
Post a Comment