Saturday, July 8, 2017

Shaw Nature Reserve

On Friday, my cousin Mike and I went on an expedition to check out Shaw Nature Reserve, which neither of us had ever been to! It's just outside St. Louis County on highway 44, near Gray Summit, about a 45 minute drive for us. It would have been a five dollar entrance fee for each of us at the visitor center, but Mike has a membership with the Missouri Botanical Garden, so we got in free!

I was dismayed to learn that the larger road loop is closed on weekends, because I had been looking at the trails online and the one I was hoping to do was too far to walk. However, there were a lot of others to choose from, and we ended up improvising pretty well. We started by driving out on the shorter loop that was still open. It was prairie on all sides, with a few isolated trees and forest in the distance. We stopped at the first parking area, which was for one of the houses on the property, and the wildflower garden. The garden was beautiful!