A couple weekends ago (before it got to hot to breath[8D] )
Christy & I found a really neat new place to ride called Little Lost Creek Conservation Area.
http://www.mdc.mo.gov/cgi-bin/atlas/search.cgi?cgistate=1&area=8030 It's near to home and has limited parking, no overnight camping but a diverse trail system from wooded trails, meadows, and some real hills & steep drop offs The topo map said there were elevation differences of 400 ft. Which for Missouri is a lot in a small park (2700 acres) anyway, here are just a few pictures of the area.
The parking lot is small, but the trail head is very close and starts off through the woods on an old loging road.
Just about a two miles in the trail starts it's decent to the creek bottoms.
but there is plenty of room, evem for an old fat man & his even fatter horse.
The picture does not show it well, but to the right of the trail here there is a 45 degree slope downhill, and on the left it is about 60 degrees uphill.
This is where we found the tree down across the trail. By this time the sun was high and so was the heat and humidity so we had a nice slow ride back to our trailer and cold drinks & snacks under the shade trees for us and the horses.
The conservation department sent an email saying they had the tree cut up and the entire trail cleared out so hopefully this weekend we can go back and finish exploring.