The "Intermediate" level Hike..........oh my!

On one of our recent excursions to Barnes and Noble Book Store we found a wonderful little book called:  Best Hikes Near St. Louis

J.D.Tanner and Emily Ressler-Tanner

We have decided to try and take some of those hikes this summer in order to get to know our wonderful state of Missouri.  So far, we have taken hikes that have had blacktop paths marked out for us.  The hike we decided on for our Father's Day hike was an INTERMEDIATE level hike.  This means sometimes steep terrain and some climbing over rocks.  We headed out with full confidence to Pickle Creek Park.  What a gift to our senses and our hearts.  This hike only made us want to go on more hikes.  The word for Missouri to me is GREEN.  I recall coming home from a two week trip to the Southwest United States with all the beauty of stark rock formations and desert reds, browns, and blacks.  As we traveled home the landscape got greener and greener and greener and my heart got happier and happier and happier.  I felt very much like Samwise Gamgee returning to Hobbiton from his adventures with Frodo.  This really is my place, my home:  this green, humid, prolific place called Missouri.  

It was a beautiful hike.  Make note that the Patriarch of the family still has on his Hawaiian shirt.  He didn't take it off all day!  

Pictures taken by the special eye and heart of Creative Child.

Life everywhere......creeping, filling every space.........even the tops of barren rocks.

A great example of  the "Bloom where you are planted" adage.  A random cactus in the middle of the humid Missouri woods.  So cool!

searching for the trail.............we lost it for awhile...........