Valley View Glades Main Trail

This is one of the trails listed in the Sixty Hikes Within Sixty Miles of St. Louis guidebook. As the trail name suggests, the trail circles around a valley containing a glade of wildflowers. Much of the trail is shaded, and you pop out periodically to view the flowers. The trail has a lot of roots and rocks and short, sharp inclines. It looks like a miserable place to run in many sections. The trail, they say, is best in the spring when most of the flowers are in bloom, but there were plenty of them on a mid-June day when I was there.