Eddy-Ballentine Trail

My wife and I went hiking recently on the Eddy-Ballentine trail in Kansas City, MO.  I used my  MapMyFitness phone application to track our route via GPS, and that map is below.  We loved the terrain and wildlife.  There are lots of rock features, some hills, and some creek beds.  And we saw a deer and a turtle during our hike.

The wild life that we didn't appreciate were all the ticks.  Luckily my wife thought ahead of time that we should take precautions so we wore long pants and sleeves and hats.  When we finished hiking we checked each other for ticks and we literally had about 10 each!  Most of those we found on the outside of our clothing, but we both did also find a couple inside our clothing.  This was mid-Spring, which I think is a prime season for them.  But regardless, cover your skin when you hike there.

The other issue that we had was following the trail.  It is marked in many places, but the markers are just pretty small orange dots or arrows.  No real signs after the trail head.  You can see by the map that there are some loops. At one point we were on the northern loop and realized that we recognized the terrain and had missed the cutoff to get off the loop.  Then we back tracked and found the cutoff, but then we missed the next part too.  We had to check the MapMyFitness map on the phone to see where we had gone wrong.  If we hadn't have had that, we may have ended up at the golf course to the east, or somewhere else, I'm not really sure.

But again, it was a really nice trail, so if you're careful about the ticks and are careful (or familiar enough with the trail) to not get lost, then its a great hike right in Kansas City.



View Eddy-Ballentine Trail in a larger map

barefoot walking

i read an article in backpacker magazine about hiking barefoot. it claimed that walking barefoot had many benefits for the foot and lower leg. basically, the idea is that if you're foot isn't supported then it needs to work harder to give you balance, which builds up your foot muscles. it made sense to me, and i like the naturalist aspect of it. so although i don't plan to ever backpack barefoot, i decided to try some barefoot walks around the neighborhood.

for my first outing i walked in shoes and socks to a nearby dirt and gravel trail. i walked barefoot maybe .25 miles on the trail around noon time. it was a little hard on the feet, but i honestly couldn't tell if it was heat from the gravel or the sharpness of the rocks that was causing me discomfort. when i got home, part of the ball of my foot was sensitive, maybe blistered. i rested it on an ice pack for a while. i think it was blistered from heat, but still not sure.

so next time i only went maybe 1/8 mile on the trail barefoot. that was fine. next time i tried walking on grass instead. it was on a big greenbelt between two directions of a large parkway road. the black asphalt was very hot at each cross street that divided the greenbelt, so i had to keep putting on my shoes, crossing the street, then taking them back off to walk. so the 4th time i went out to try it, i finally realized i should wear sandals so that i can easily take them on and off if i need to switch back and forth. i found that i could even tuck my sandals in the waist band of my shorts so that i didn't have to carry them. that day wasn't as hot though, so it turned out i could walk across the greenbelt cross streets that day anyway.

so today i went for my longest barefoot walk yet. i went for 2 miles total, barefoot for probably 1.75 of it. that meant i stayed barefoot on a lot of sidewalks and street crossings. not as fun as to walk on the cement and asphalt as the grass, so lots of times i would step off the sidewalk and just walk in the grass of people's yards. again, the ball of my foot feels a little sensitive afterwards, but hopefully that skin will toughen up over time. i've still managed so far to avoid any glass, prickly plants, and dog poop. knock on wood!