Outdoor Adventure: Missouri River Scenic Hike
We have been enjoying and taking full advantage of our beautiful St. Louis weather lately. Temps in the low 70’s, lots of sunshine and nice breezes. This makes for the perfect hiking conditions.
My family humors me a lot. I love the outdoors, I could spend all day long outside and I especially love nature. So if you can find me a place that I can enjoy, the weather is compatible, and the view is gorgeous, I’m probably gonna want to spend a lot of time there.
We recently discovered a park in our area called EcoPark. What is unique about this park, is that it runs along the Missouri river (the very edge). It’s all Wetlands, that were mostly natural but did have a bit of a push when arrowhead, swamp milkweed, great blue lobelia and cord grass were added after some time and now it’s simply gorgeous. I feel like I’m in another world when I am hiking the trails.
Another interesting fact, is that in 1993 we had a huge flood hit our area. There were homes where this park now stands. They were completely underwater during the massive flood that took 52 lives, caused $18 billion worth of damage and more than 500 counties were declared federal disaster areas. I lived through this. I had just graduated from high school, and remember every detail clearly.
When walking through these areas, you can find remnants of life back then. The craziest item took a few minutes to figure out what it had been. It was a full bed frame with a mattress. Of course all that was left was literally rusted metal in the shape of coils and you could still sort of follow the lines of the frame.
Obviously while all that is interesting, my favorite part is truly the scenery. All of it. The green, the river, the tree’s that have been standing for so long and so many years you can see their age. The undisturbed look of it all.
Unfortunately there is grafitti is various places as well, but even so, I tried to find the beauty in it as well.
The river views were gorgeous. So peaceful, and I was so thrilled that my kids enjoyed it as much as I did.
Do you see the duck at the end of the log? This made us laugh.
We even brough baby Carsyn who is three months old. Mama wore him, but watching her climb through this with the baby was priceless.
It reminds me of some obstacle course. It wasn’t difficult to cross through, but when you stumble upon it, you pause for a moment for sure. haha
According to my step counter app, we went about 4 miles in total while we were there. I’m sure we could have done even more. It didn’t feel like more than a mile, since we were stopping so much to look at everything and take in the views.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading this and looking at all the photos. I have included the rest below. It was truly a perfect day for me, and I’m so happy my kiddo’s came with me and enjoyed it just as much. (they were a bit tired at the end!)
Until next time!
