Riding the Frisco Highline Trail, MO – 2020

Now that the weather has finally made it’s way down to reasonable numbers, Andrew and I decided to ride the 2^nd longest rail trail in Missouri. At a whopping 35 miles long, the Frisco Highline Trail goes from the outskirts of Springfield, MO north to Bolivar. Rather than ride it start to finish, we decided to home base it at the middle at 7C’s Winery and Meadery. The winery is located just outside of Walnut Grove (mm 18 on the trail) and offers free camping to cyclists in their field. It was perfectly located so that we could leave our car and gear at the winery, ride to one end and back, drink wine and camp, then ride the other half. Since we didn’t have to lug our gear around we decided this would be a nice time to ride our single bikes instead of the tandem – I will say I missed being able to just take pictures whenever I wanted while riding the back of the tandem, but it was nice to ride at my own pace.

Day 1 - Saturday, September 19

After letting our hosts at 7C’s know we were there and planned to camp there that night, we made our way south on the trail. There were about 2 ½ miles of pothole ridden hilly farm roads before we reached the trail, but we were anxious to roll, so it went by pretty quickly. The trail itself is very primitive compared to the Katy Trail. This one had two gravel ruts to follow that varied in size and quality. Andrew enjoyed the ‘adventure’ of the trail, while I missed the wide paths that didn’t take as much focus. I did enjoy that the majority of the trail stayed within a tree tunnel, and with the weather in 70s it was perfect for riding. As we got closer to Springfield, metal art sculptures started to pop up along the trail, and then to my delight, it switched to a paved trail for about the last 8 miles. With our bright idea of leaving all our gear back at the car, after a power bar each we were out of food – so to keep our morals high we opted to stop for convenience store ice cream on the way home – excellent decision.

We celebrated 39 mile ride with some alfalfa mead from the 7C’s winery before cooking dinner and setting up camp. In case you’re wondering – our new 3 person tent is a huge improvement to our old one.

Day 2 - Sunday, September 20

We woke up with the sun and dew on day 2. It was a little chilly but still a pleasant morning of coffee and oatmeal. After loading our gear up into the car we made our way to the north end of the trail. This direction was more remote than the previous day (no ice cream stops in sight) but it is the side with all the bridges. There were less people riding past us today, but we did encounter a friendly trail dog that raced along with us – although after he peed on Andrew’s wheel while we were resting, we decided it was time to lose him. The ride on the 2^nd day was very meditative with just us and nature. Just like the south end, as we approached Bolivar, the trail switched to pavement maybe 5 miles out. There is a really obnoxious 2ish mile detour on roads as you get towards the town, that unless you really need a bathroom (there weren’t any along the trail) then it just wasn’t worth it. I’m not sure if it’s planned, but I hope they are able to fund a bridge across the highway at some point.

Not knowing what awaited us past the detour, we opted to complete the entire trail. It was nice to cook lunch in the pavilion at the end (and use their restrooms) but if I were doing the trail again I would probably stop and turn around at the detour. After lunch of some simple Loma Linda Vegetarian boil in a bag meals we were ready to head back to the winery and our car. The ride back was teaming with wildlife – we had to dodge turtles and turkeys. We even saw the same trail dog running along with another family that was too slow to break away from him. Overall it was a very pleasant little trail – even if I wasn’t 100% in shape for it.