Backpacking

Places to go: Piney Creek Wilderness

Right off the bat, the most unusual thing about this Wilderness area is that its boundaries circumscribe the entire drainage of Piney Creek. So you always start on a ridge and go down into the valley of the same creek system. There isn’t a lot of up and down all day hiking. Once you’re down in the valley it’s flat. Piney Creek opens into Table Rock Lake on the east, allowing access to and from the lake…

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Trip report: Backpacking at Piney Creek Wilderness – April 2012

A girl, woman, and man sitting on a log for a picture during a spring backpacking trip in Piney Creek Wilderness in the southern Missouri Ozarks.

One of the more problematic aspects of an outdoor-loving lifestyle is that you have to either find someone to take your kids while you go play or you have to bring your kids with you. We finally have two kids old enough to leave at home. But our youngest is still a bit young so we’ve been working on getting her interested in the idea of going on backpacking trips with us

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Trip report: Backpacking the Berryman Trail – 2011

Man and woman wearing backpacks while hiking the Berryman Trail in Mark Twain National Forest.

With the kids away for Spring Break with their father for a week we decided it was time for our next backpacking trip. The children had to be dropped off and picked up from St Louis, so that focused our attention on the Berryman Trail. Some people do this trail in a day, bikes do […]

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Trip report: Backpacking the Devil’s Backbone Wilderness – February 2011

This was our second backpacking trip and we’d picked the Devil’s Backbone Wilderness as our destination. We were still learning – especially about finding a spot to camp and reducing the weight of our packs, we’ll always be learning something. The weather was rather dreary but we enjoyed ourselves.

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Trip report: backpacking at Hercules Glades Wilderness – December 2010

Our first backpacking experience The kids were with their dad in Chicago. The forecast was for unseasonably warm temperatures. We had backpacking gear we’d not fully tried out yet. It had been nearly six weeks since our last camping trip. It was time. We were ready to go on our first backpacking trip!

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Backpacking Trial Run – Weekend Camping at Berry Bend

This weekend we tried out our backpacking gear. Friday evening we took several kids to Kansas City for a church event. We needed to be on hand to collect them again Sunday afternoon, so we left Lanie in the capable hands of Ginger’s cousin, put Getzger in charge at home and once we’d dropped the […]

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