First Walk of the New Year 2016

It is always good to get out on January 1st and set a good precendent for the new year. It was cold, 23F, it has not been very cold, but it has been wet with all the rain and river flooding around town. I was off to my little 11 mile loop Lost Valley Trail early in the morning on Friday.

The small creek that runs beside the beginning of the trail was backed up and flooded from the Missouri River, so there was no way of starting from the normal parking lot.

Fortunately I know a way to get to the loop from the back, so I drove around and dropped in on the loop from a bike trail farther up the hill. you could see where the water had been and receded just a few days before, but the temperature had everything hard and frozen so it was easy to walk on. The low sun of the early morning made it a great walk

Obviously all the small streams and run offs had plenty of water in them and made some nice waterfalls over the rocks. I did just the lower loop and then came around on the longer portion of the bike path, about 5 miles total. It about 2 hours.