Blabber Memorial Park Takeaway. A Great Hike A Hike Away. Dogwood trail turned out to be the perfect length for an eight-year-old hiking with a thirty-six-year-old. A 7.1 / 10 hike. Two hour loop trail with a couple of snack breaks. It's a little long for a five-year-old. They marked almost everything on the trail well. One spot got a little dicey, but we just stayed on flag color, and it worked out fine.
No internet, so load your GPS before you get there.
They close the bathrooms in the winter. There is plenty of parking. Once you reach the park limits, it takes a long time, like eight-plus minutes, to get to the trailhead.
Blabber Memorial Park Experience Summary
We went to Babler Memorial Park for a New Year's Day hike with our friends. It was a lot of fun. I don't think I've ever been to Babler before, although my wife says we may have gone sometime during the pandemic for a hike.
I definitely didn't recognize it.
We went to the Dogwood Trail, which is kind of right in the middle of the whole place. So once you get there, you have to add another eight minutes just to go 25 miles per hour to the actual trailhead. I didn't factor in those minutes when people told me to meet them there at 10:30 am, so we were a bit late.
It takes a bit to weave through the whole park, but just follow the signs, and you'll make it.
Tip: You're not going to have cell service. At least no one in our group did. It turns off once you get into the park. So, make sure to load up your GPS and trail data beforehand.
The Dogwood Trail was fantastic. It was a two-mile loop, and I went with only my eight-year-old. We went on New Year's Day when it was 38 degrees, and the younger kids got upset by the cold and couldn't walk the second half.
The older eight-year-olds did the whole thing before starting to get tired right when we saw the sign for the parking lot. It was just the right length for them to walk the whole thing with a couple of friends.
The hike isn't "easy" as it has a bunch of elevation changes. I appreciated the workout and, again, the eight-year-old did it without any complaints or issues the whole time.
Overall, a lot of fun.
Blabber Memorial Park Breakdown
We did the Dogwood Trail from the main parking lot in the park's center. The hike is about a quarter-mile, followed by a 1.5-mile loop.
It took two hours to do the whole hike. I was expecting it only to be an hour, and it ended up taking two with snack breaks and the pace of an eight-year-old.
Here's a rough outline of the trail. It's pretty simple.
Once you hit the breakpoint from the entrance to the loop, you follow it in a big circle. There is one point about a half mile in clockwise where it seems like you could turn left; just don't. Follow the aquamarine markers to stay on the track.
There are a bunch of hills, both up and down, throughout the hike, which makes it entertaining in terms of what to expect. You do a lot of mountain paths, zigzags, camelbacks, switch-humps, whatever you want to call them.
At one point, it gets a little "Sound Of Music" feel to it, walking along the top of a small hill ridge.
We didn't see any animals, and there weren't any crazy natural features that we stopped to see throughout the way. It was mostly just trees, rocks, and hiking up and down.
There were two good resting spots where we had snacks. About a third of the way, there was a bench or a log equivalent, and then again two-thirds of the way through.
We went in the middle of the winter, so you could see through the trees. I like that look more than the leaves you'll find everywhere in the summer.
Challenge Level
There's a pretty constant elevation change the whole hike
At one point, I was a little bit worried that we might get lost in the woods, and I think another family actually did get a little mixed up. Pay attention to the trail markers.
There's no GPS fallback.
You have to stay on your toes a little bit, but everything is fairly marked. It wasn't dangerous or anything.
I don't know if a four-year-old would have had a good time. The two four-year-olds in our party did not enjoy themselves. They got pretty cold for the second half and you will have to carry them for the last mile. Big kids can handle it, but it will be a workout.
Blabber Memorial Park Amenities And Miscellaneous
I would recommend the hike a bit more in the summertime or atleast when it's not freezing cold.
They closed the bathrooms in the wintertime, which meant my son had to pee in the woods. I don't quite get why parks do that.
It was a fun hike, and while it's not too far away from St. Louis, the last eight minutes kind of dragged on the excursion drive. It was a 35-minute drive from the house, with the last eight minutes in the park.
The time to get the hike is probably the biggest downside.
For the quality of the hike, I don't know if I would go back. I would say it's worth doing once to see if you think it's worth the drive commitment.
Definitely worth it for a twenty-minute drive.
Parking At Blabber Memorial Park
Yeah, parking was easy. It was actually, it ended up being like the first of the year special hike day at 10 o'clock, half an hour before we got there. So the parking lot was completely full, but we still found parking no problem. So like a full parking lot with plenty of spaces, if that makes any sense.
Blabber Memorial Park Receipt
