Any good hiking trails in the Kansas City area?

I recently visited the downtown Kansas City area for the week. With the tmperatures warm enough for barefoot running I decided to run directly from the hotel next to the Kansas City Convention Center where I was staying and run to the nearest trail. Each day I ran from the hotel parking garage onto the streets of downtown Kansas City over too the Berkeley Riverfront Park trail with out any shoes as backup. These daily trips to this trail along the Missouri River were very enjoyable! The big 12 games were in town so running barefoot on the downtown streets gained much attention to me running barefoot. Maybe a bit more than I had hoped for never the less I had a good time. Ran about 5 miles each day up and back on the trail usually ending each run with about a 3 mile walk.

During these walks streets were randomly chosen to obtain enough time for approximately a 1 hour walk. Spent some time walking through the River Market area and this time of year is the slow season since this is usually filled with farmers market vendors in the peak summer months. Since there were not a lot of people around this time of year I walked through this area and checked out some of the small vendors that happened to have permanent shops located in a long enclosed building with glass vestibules. Was a great place to check out while on a relaxing walk.

While this was not a hiking trail that I was originally looking to run it did prove to be a very enjoyable area for running and if I’m downtown again will defiantly run here in the future.