Karst Trail at Rock Bridge Memorial State Park

This is the first of a series on the trails at Rock Bridge Memorial State Park.  Rock Bridge Memorial State Park is located just south of Columbia.  Beautiful, and well maintained, there is lots to do there, and even more to see. 

My son-in-law and I are hiking the trails one at a time.  We start this series with the Karst Trail which which is named after a a "landscape formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves." 

Entrance to the trail from the parking lot.

There are a lot of sinkholes in Missouri, there are a lot at the park, but I have never seen so many sink holes in one place than what I saw in this park.

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Below are pictures of just two, of the many, sink holes we walked by:

Overall impression?   The Karst trail is picturesque, lots of variety, and a pleasant walk. Nothing breathtaking, I will show  you some of that later, but interesting nonetheless. Pleasant.  It took us less than 45 minutes to hike the two mile loop.  We did not see a soul either.  You can actually make a day of it by stringing together some of the smaller trails like this one,  but unfortunately you will have to drive to some of them since they do not all connect. There is one larger 8 mile loop which  I will cover later.