We have made it our goal to find hiking trails we haven't explored yet and this is one we for sure…read morewould have never stumbled upon on our own. With the help of Google we found a list that included Rozarks. Off we set with our Google maps to find the trail head by car. We were led to the Rosedale Arch and thought we were in the wrong spot. However we weren't giving up so after poking around a bit we saw the trail entrance. We soon discovered it is one of many all through the Rosedale area. This has been developed and still looks to be developed since 2015. It is not well marked at all and for sure would advise to take a look at the map on the website link. That being said we did not do that but we also never felt "lost". There are tree markings to those that pay attention. It is very peaceful and serene. The trails are steep and rough in many spots so this is not what I would call "easy" hiking. The trail also seems to be geared towards mountain bikes and therefore you need to be aware of them and yield to them. We were here on a weekday morning and didn't see any. No amenities except trashcans on the heads of the trail so do come prepared.

Weston Bend State Park is a peaceful and beautiful spot located near the town of Weston, MO. The…read morepark is famous for its picturesque beauty, walking trails that winds through forests overlooking the Missouri River. I visited the park in winter last yr and fell in love with it. Primarily I just hiked around but I saw many people bird watching, and enjoying the quiet nature as well. The best part is the scenic overlook that gives a beautiful view of the river valley, especially at sunset. When I visited the park, it felt calm and less crowded. That definitely makes it a nice place for families or anyone who wants a break from busy life. My suggestion to everyone one is to hike at this park and then head to the town of Weston to enjoy some hot wine at Pritle Wineries followed by amazing food at the O'malleys pub.

Small park that nestles along the Missouri River…read more Trails for hiking and biking exist on the eastern side. You can also camp and picnic. If you hike along the West Ridge you will climb up to the ridge and come up to some overlooks that look into Kansas. The park was unmanned on Indigenous Peoples Day, but folks were able to access the park. If you have pets, the park has a small dog park at the front end. Plenty of benches can be found along the lower trails to take a load off. Right now the leaves are turning into their fall shades and the birds that come in the fall are arriving for the birders that are on the hunt. Plenty of information can be found at the trail head. There are clean bathrooms. The water fountains don't work, but the taps do. The weather today was awesome. I will return.

The park is clean and attractive. Also, you can reserve a shelter for your party. Dogs are also…read moreallowed.

Grossest bathrooms. We are on a cross country driving trip. Stopped for a picnic driving break. No…read morewaterfalls, lots of goose poop, most unclean bathrooms ever. No way I'd let my kids play here.

Had a delightful time exploring and learning. Great interactive displays and friendly staff. I love…read moreeagles, so the live-cam and seating area were perfect to view and enjoy. We even got to feel the Western Ratsnake! Excellent and varied walking trails.

This land has been close to my heart for most of my life. I…read moreremember my mom taking us on nature hikes, way back before I knew they were so cool. Now, it's one of my favorite pastimes as an adult. The Hubs and I had a rare day together that we decided to enjoy outside. He had never been here before, so it's just a hop from where we live. Seemed like an easy decision. Went through the nature center first, which is always a nice start. Fun to see the creatures and read about the past. Then we decided to do the longer hike. Great choice. Defined, clean paths. Not terribly busy, even though you are directly in the city. Plenty of wildlife, this time was smaller spring babies. Still a great reminder of seasons and the importance of protecting their environment. Overall, well worth a visit.

This trail is great! Lots to look at with creeks, deer, birds, turtles etc! Can get busy but is…read moresuch a great spot!

Randomly found this trail after missing my workout class time. It is such a nice and SHADED trail…read more They have many parking lots throughout, so you can start wherever. I also like that the trail was lined like a street! So, everyone knew which side to claim and can stay clear or the bicyclist. They had little ponds everywhere too which was cute! Many benches and water fountains throughout for pit stops if needed. I'm not sure how long the trail is, but it's lengthy

This is a fun trail to hike on. Most of it is paved, although there are some off paths that are all…read moreterrain and wooded. I was not familiar with this trail so it was a little confusing to get to. Tip: you can access the trail by the tennis courts on Blue river rd. Tip 2: the bathrooms by the tennis courts were not open yet (March) and no bathrooms along the trail. Along the trail you pass lots of the park's amenities: shelter house, tennis courts, benches, playground, golf course, water, love lock bridge and more. If you do the entire hike it's about 5 miles. Parts of the path are secluded but I was with a friend and felt safe. I would recommend doing the hike with at least another person, although there were lots of people walking, running, and cycling on the trail. Good trail for all levels.

It was great hike, very long but seemed to be forever. I ended up turning around. The bridges were…read moreawesome and the lock bridge was really cool, but you just get to the red bridge and only go on it and turn around. The tennis courts seemed nice and they had basketball hoops, a park and bathrooms . You can go to the bridge and then go on the other paths. I will say there was about seven cars with older men in the parking lot in the last parking lot just sitting in there cars which was kind of interesting . Honestly for being a younger woman with her kid I probably wouldn't go back by myself again, everyone was friendly though. Also a semi parked just off the dirt/ gravel way with a car and I didn't feel comfortable going that way so I had to just turn around completely. The people do come and clean the bathrooms which is good, I didn't go in there but I saw the guy going in at one point before my walk. By the bridge there was literally trash next to the trash can so like come on my fellow walkers do better.

Olathe and Overland Park are lucky to have this trail head and this trail system. My running club…read moremeets here every so often and we can either run to mid American Nazarene university which is about 2 1/2 miles away or go in the opposite direction and run for miles and miles. Unfortunately there is no water here but there is a trashcan and a porta-potty. so if you're in the area be sure to stop by and use this wonderful trail for running biking rollerblading walking. it's great for everything.

Phenomenal runners trail in Olathe, KS…read more This trail is over 27 miles - great for walking, running, or biking. Great training distances / elevations for 1/2 and full marathon runners. One area terminates to a picnic area with fountains and bathrooms. It crosses some main roads in certain sections but also goes underneath in tunnels in others. What better way to up your mileage on your winter runs!

My husband and I Roeland Park, this nature sanctuary the day before Mother's Day. We had a heck of…read morea time finding it because the address was listed incorrectly. The nature sanctuary is on 12th St. and the connecting street is East St. Once we figured out where it was, we took our time on one of the trails I believe there are four trail options and the longest is 1.6 mile loop and the second is a 1 mile loop and the other ones are less than that. But it is a beautiful nature sanctuary with lots of greenery, woods, streams, water falls, and benches to enjoy the scenery. No pets are allowed since it is a nature sanctuary. There is a covered area off of one of the hikes that we went to that leads to some picnic tables. There's also several picnic tables by the parking lot. There are also bathrooms near the parking lot. The parking lot is next to the track and field belonging to the college. We really enjoyed our slow, meandering walk/hike and will definitely go back.

Hidden right by the bustle of downtown parkville, the parkville nature sanctuary has become one of…read moremy favorite places to do an easy hike. The trails are well maintained, and while there are some inclines at certain points, the trail is easy to follow and not strenuous. I love the various view points where you can stop and really appreciate natural beauty, like the waterfall or the butterfly pass. It feels like this is in its own little world despite being so close to the city. Be aware that the parking lot is pretty small so at peak times it may be hard to park.

Awsome place tons of room not crouded tons of room to play frisbee or soccer one down side is there…read moreare not enough restrooms

I took my two grandkids to this park to check out the playground. The playground is large and…read moreexpansive. The kids enjoyed their time there. There were some low spots under some playground equipment, where a recent rain had made little ponds of mulch. There are public bathrooms right by the playground and a variety of benches. It is in full sun, but the day we went it was cloudy. The park itself is enormous because I drove around and it took quite some time! The positives about the park is the playground, the beautiful lake, driving through the park reminded me of driving through a deciduous forest. They have a marina where people were loading boats to take out on the lake. There was a variety of little gravel parking spaces here and there as you drove on the road. If it was somewhere near an opening to a little spot by the lake, then I would see a guy standing and fishing. During my time driving through the park, I only passed two cars. I think most people are concentrated in the play area, which was not that many people. Or they are using the marina for boating, or there is one area where you can park and I think go down and view a type of dam which I did not look at. That is the positive things about the park. I did not notice any wooden trails or trail markers, I noticed one paved path that said it was a trail and it looked like it was wide enough that biking people could use it. I think there is a lot of under utilized space in this park that could be used for better use. The positive about that being under utilized is that wild animals are probably enjoying it! I do feel that aspects of the park are unsafe. For example, there is a building right next to the play area, I don't know what it's used for but multiple windows had been broken out and then replaced with board. Then other window windows were just simply empty like they gave up. They had a large and high fence surrounding the air conditioner that led to that building so obviously people had probably stripped the air conditioner in the past for components to sell. Also, there was quite a bit of trash on the playground, which I walked around and picked up. Their trash cans are not covered. They're just open black bins with the top cut off to throw trash into. That is probably why I saw multiple ones tipped over because wild animals like raccoons are getting into them. I only saw one Park Ranger, and that was near a tree company that was dealing with a tree that was knocked over in the storm. They have a lot of side roads that we have a sign saying it's leading to a shelter for a picnic. I drove up three of them and it will take a while to get to a particular shelter and they will have a swingset and maybe one other toy, but they are very downtrodden looking. The shelters are in bad condition and very dark because the trees around them need to be trimmed. They do seem to have bathrooms by the shelters. I noticed that the hours of this park are from 6 AM to midnight, which is pretty long to stay open for a park. I feel like that leads to criminal activity. When I would drive down several of these longer roads leading to a shelter, there would be occasionally one vehicle on a little gravel parking space and just sitting in their car. If they had trails in this park, I would not feel safe by myself in hiking on them. I think the reason there is hardly anyone at this park because there's really not much to do except fish and they didn't even seem to have a lot of areas to do that unless I missed it, I think the marina seem to be the busiest area. I probably would not go back to this particular park for these reasons. I think it's a shame because it's so large and beautiful but very under utilized in the acreage about what could be on this park.

This area was called "Monkey Mountains," because early settlers deemed the river bluffs too steep…read morefor even monkeys to climb. This place is as close to being out in the wild as you can get in the KC area. A little bit of a drive but worth it if you want a rugged terrain. It's perfect. Reaching the open meadow at the top is wonderful. Use bug spray and check for ticks.

Monkey Mountain is an 855 acre nature preserve in Eastern Jackson County, halfway in-between Grain…read moreValley and Oak Grove. The address I listed is the approximate address of the south entrance to the park, there is another entrance a little over a mile north off Old US 40 Hwy next to a softball field. The park is mostly undeveloped, which is what I love about it. You get to experience nature instead of a sanitized version of nature. There are two primary loop trails, one measuring 3.5 miles and one measuring between 2-3 miles depending on the route taken. Numerous smaller trails criss-cross between these main trails and branch out forming various side loops. You can spend hours hiking here and not see everything. The park caters to hikers and equestrians. I usually encounter a few other people at the park but only between long stretches of complete isolation. The elevation ranges from about 780 feet on the banks of Sni-a-Bar Creek to about 950 feet at the summit. There is a wide variety of terrain in the park: marshy lowlands in the north and northwest, thick woods and steep terrain covering most of the western half, limestone outcroppings along the ridge and at the south end of the park, a huge roiling meadow in the center, and farmed land along the eastern edges. Several ponds dot the landscape, and numerous tiny streams feed into Sni-a-Bar Creek along the western edge. There is even a waterfall in the park, but I will not reveal the location since it is both a fragile and a dangerous feature (especially in winter). Finding it can be part of your adventure. In the spring and early summer the park's meadows are filled with a wide variety of wildflowers, and wildlife can be spotted year-round. I've seen deer, foxes, turkeys, tortoises and turtles, all sorts of birds, and even evidence of some sort of wildcat. In the first half of the 20th century, much of what is now Monkey Mountain Park was part of a show farm called Sni-a-Bar Farms, owned by William Rockhill Nelson. The hillside and meadow were used for grazing sheep. Evidence of that can still be seen today in the form of farm remnants such as an old boundary fence running east-west through the middle of the park. If you hike the park, don't do it alone until you are familiar. Even though there are trails they are not always easy to see, and some portions of the trails can be treacherous. If your hike takes you through the northwest portion of the park you can expect to encounter mud pretty much year round so wear appropriate shoes. You will also need to carry your own water, there are no facilities at the park except at the softball field and an outhouse at the south entrance.