First Hammock Hang- July 2, 2011

Finally a day off to get the hammock out and put it between to real trees. I have had it up in the basement for a couple of weeks as I have removed the heavy commercial parts from it and installed a real light weight suspension using whoopie slings and tree huggers with toggles. Indian Camp Creek is very close to my house and has several areas to practice a hang. It was a nice day, but hot. 92 at 8:30 am with about 90% humidity.

 Summer flowers were everywhere in the park. I was surpised not to see any snakes, sunning themselves, today

Pitched the hammock in a groove of Cedar trees about 50 feet off the trail. 3 bikers and 2 trail runners passed by and never noticed I was resting just off the trail

Plenty of room for me to lay perfectly flat

 The view through the bug netting, keeping the flying, biting insects off me.

The hammock should be perfect for hikes in Missouri, Minnesota, and the Smoky Mountain Area.

Video of today's hike and closeup of the new hammock

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5mMJ59jSMA

Trail- 4 miles in 1:30 minutes-
Grand Trunk Hammock- skeeter beater
Hammock Suspension- whoopieslings.com

BWSTL- National Trails Day 2011

Backwoods Hiking Club supported National Trails Day 2011 by doing trail maintenance on the Lewis section of the Lewis and Clark Trail in St.Charles County. The Video tells our story.

http://youtu.be/wP2cpJmH5RY

BWSTL- Broemmelsiek Park 5.28.11

With another weekend threatening rain, a much smaller group of BWSTL met at Broemmelsiek Park for the 4 mile loop hike. The rain held off, but we looked like a rainbow walking the trail in rain jackets in every color.

 There was much more water and mud on the trail because of the recent rain, and rain, and rain....

 The Cicadas are here already and it promises to be a noisy summer

 We saw a deer in the distance using the trail, but as bright as our outfits we were not likely to get very close

 The rain held off and it was a nice day to be out.

BWSTL- Klondike Park 5.21.11

It turned out to be a really nice day, but it didn't start that way with the threat of more rain. The walk this week was just the 3 mile Klondike Park trail. It was almost 10 am and only 1 person had showed up in the parking lot. We assumed the day had been cancelled because of the threat of bad weather.

Nice conference center in the park ( above)

We decided to go, just the 3 of us. Vicky, myself and Backwooder Greg. When we walked to the trail head it was blocked off and had a sign that said closed "due to storm damage"

The overlook at the top gave a great view of the very high Missouri River and the power plant at Labadie MO.

We decided to walk to the other end of the park and try the other side of the trail.

This park has spent a lot of time making bird sanctuary areas

Today was the day of the snake. We saw this guy early ( just a common Garter Snake) but we also saw a Bull snake and a very small Black snake today.

We later did met up with Kristin and the other Backwoods group. They had gone to the other end of the trail head and started from there. We only did about a 1.5 miles when we met up and they had pictures of a Copperhead that they had seen.

 The wildflowers were very pretty in spots

Nice view of the river valley farm land

 This is also a bike trail with some really cool ramps and jumps

steep jump off for the bikes (below)

 The old sandstone quarry has been made into a nice lake

Greg

Vicky and Craig

A nice easy, albeit muddy, walk. Klondike has tent camping, a lake for fishing and even supplies a nice communal kitchen area.

A Walk on Lost Valley Trail 5.14.11

"Lets go out for a little walk this morning." - Craig
      "Sure we can go do 3 or 4 miles over at Lost Valley"- Vicky
"Ok"- Craig
7 miles in the misty rain later..... LOL
It was a little muddy, but it was a nice cool day to be out

The wild flowers were still easy to see in a larger very green forest

Trail Stats:
7 miles- 3 hr 14 min
Recommended Restaurants:
Los Cabos- New Melle, MO.