It’s Time to Take a Hike in Saint Louis, Missouri! The best way to experience St. Louis is by hiking it! Get outdoors with author Steve Henry, with the new full-color edition of 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: St. Louis.  A perfect blend of popular trails and hidden gems, the selected trails transport you to scenic overlooks, wildlife hot spots, and historical settings that renew your spirit and recharge your body. Enjoy the tranquil solitude of the Wilderness Trail at Meramec State Park. Learn about the area’s flora and fauna with a family outing to Powder Valley Nature Center. Immerse yourself in history at Trail of Tears State Park. Take in the panoramic views of the Mississippi River Valley at the Little Grand Canyon in Illinois. With Steve Henry as your guide, you’ll learn about the area and experience nature through 60 hikes within 60 miles of the greater St. Louis area! Each hike description features key at-a-glance information on distance, difficulty, scenery, traffic, hiking time, and more, so you can quickly and easily learn about each trail. Detailed directions, GPS-based trail maps, and elevation profiles help to ensure that you know where you are and where you’re going. Tips on nearby activities further enhance your enjoyment of every outing. Whether you’re a local looking for new places to explore or a visitor to the area, 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: St. Louis provides plenty of options for a couple hours or a full day of adventure, all within about an hour from St. Louis and the surrounding communities. Steve Henry grew up on a farm in the rolling hills of central Kansas, spending much of his youth working under the blue skies of the plains. After earning bachelor’s degrees in marketing and agricultural economics at Kansas State University, he served a sentence of seven years in the offices of a large insurance company. Missing the outdoor life, he left the corporate world in 1985 to cycle across the continent twice, including one trek from Alaska to Key West. Since then he has led bicycle and backpack tours, contributed articles to outdoor publications and Web sites, and written Mountain Bike! The Ozarks and The Best in Tent Camping: Missouri & the Ozarks. He heads for the mountain and desert West whenever he can shake himself loose from the Midwest, and he enjoys fall and winter camping and hiking in the Ozarks. When not roaming the outdoors on foot or by bike, Steve sees the country from the driver’s seat of a Peterbilt 379. Al Foster Trail Length: 4.4 miles on main loop; add 5 miles with side loops and spur - Configuration: Loop with cutoffs, side loop, and spur - Difficulty: Easy; more difficult on the optional Cedar Bluff Loop - Scenery: Bottomland forest and river vistas - Exposure: Shaded - Traffic: Normally moderate; heavy on nice weekends - Trail Surface: Gravel on west half; packed earth on bottomland loop; some rocky stretches on Cedar Bluff Loop - Hiking Time: 2–3 hours on loop, longer with spur and side loop - Driving Distance: 5 crooked miles from intersection of Manchester, Clarkson, and Keifer Creek roads - Access: 7 a.m.–half hour after sunset - Maps: USGS Manchester; online maps available at www.stlouisco.com and www.meramecgreenway.org - Wheelchair Accessibility: Not officially, but wheelchairs could probably successfully negotiate the trail from the Sherman Beach trailhead to the Glencoe trailhead - Facilities: None - Special Comments: Dogs must be on a leash. In Brief Enjoy lush bottomlands and riverside vistas as you explore the Meramec River Valley on the Al Foster and Stinging Nettle trails. Then give the kids a ride on the Wabash, Frisco, and Pacific miniature railroad at the western trailhead. Description Though this hike is called the Al Foster Trail, it’s actually three trails rolled into one. The Al Foster is a 4.5-mile point-to-point trail. It runs from the Glencoe trailhead at its western end, passes through St. Louis County’s Sherman Beach Park, and then reaches its eastern terminus in Castlewood State Park. There the Al Foster intersects with Castlewood’s Stinging Nettle Trail. This 2.4-mile path along the Meramec River runs back to the Sherman Beach trailhead near the midpoint of the Al Foster, making a 4.4-mile loop if you hike from Sherman Beach. You can add another 2.7 hilly miles to this otherwise flat hike by doing the Cedar Bluff Trail, a side loop off the Al Foster that climbs into the hills above the Meramec Valley. For most hikers the Sherman Beach trailhead is the best place to start hikes on the Al Foster, so those are the GPS coordinates listed in this profile. The trail’s character is very different depending on which way you go from Sherman Beach. Hiking west to Glencoe it’s flat, wide, and graveled, and for much of its distance follows an old railroad bed. Going east it starts out fairly tame but soon gets narrow and wild in the forested bottomlands along the Meramec River. Note: Much of the trail east of the Sherman Beach tr