Hiking

Trail Map: Busiek State Forest and Wildlife Area

Trail map of Busiek State Forest, Missouri

We’ve got a trail map you can view online, and there’s an even better one complete with a full USGS topographic map of the area to download for Google Earth, or your GPS if it accepts KMZ files. We’ve also included Google Street view links to get you to the trailhead.

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Berry Bend Campground – Harry S Truman Lake, Missouri

Mist and low clouds wafting over Truman Lake in the morning while the sun breaks through, lighting the shore. A motorboat speeds by.

Berry Bend Campground. sits on a promontory reached via short causeway on the Osage River Arm of Harry S Truman Lake, 29 Miles from Clinton Missouri, 18 miles from the junction with Highway 13 and 11 miles from Warsaw Missouri.

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Trail Map: Sac River Trail, Springfield Missouri

A map of the Sac River Trail, Springfield Missouri

The Sac River Trail is 3 miles North of the I44 at Springfield on Highway 13. It’s primarily a biking trail, but it’s our ‘go to’ place for a quick hike. You just need to keep an ear out for fast approaching bikes and step out of the way.

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Trip report: Three days backpacking in the Piney Creek Wilderness – June 2012

Photograph of an MSR Mutha Hubba Tent without Flysheet camped at the mouth of Piney Creek and Buck Hollow

School’s out for the summer, so there’s no school run to worry about. Lanie’s staying with her grandparents for a few days. The big kids are old enough to be left home alone. What better opportunity to get in a few days backpacking?

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Do you need hiking poles?

When we first started hiking the question soon arose, “Do we need hiking poles?” (also known as trekking poles). We thought that they were pretentious accessories only used by the sort of people who like to buy every latest gadget and bit of gear to look the part. I just could not see the need for them.

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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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Ozarks Hikes: Sac River Trail

Girl sitting in the middle of the Sac River Trail in the fall, surrounded by trees.

There’s a little-known trail just north of Springfield, within the city limits, that will give you miles of moderately rugged hiking and exposure to streams, woods, and open fields. The Springfield-Greene County Park Board owns the 300 acres that contain well over 8 miles of natural surface single track. The trail is rocky in places, muddy in places, and winds back and forth an amazing amount. There are no steep climbs but the trail goes up and down enough, and has many small seasonal stream crossings and plenty rugged rocks to give you a decent hiking workout.

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Sac River Trail – March 26, 2012

Strike while the iron is hot, they say. The weather was perfect and we just got back from a week’s backpacking trip to the St. Francois Mountains. We were eager to get a move on! Plus, the 12yo and 16yo wanted to get some exercise. Directly after school we filled water bottles and piled into […]

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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: Hercules Glades day hike with MDC

Hikers stopped for lunch at the Long Creek Falls, Hercules Glades Wilderness

We wanted to backpack in the Hercules Glades Wilderness, but we’d never been there. We decided to reconnoiter the Wilderness first, in preparation for our first ever backpacking trip. We found out that  MDC’s Springfield Nature Center was organizing a ‘Hiking Club’ trip to Hercules Glades, so we signed up to go. The group is limited […]

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