Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Sculpture Park Run


While in St Louis this past week (actually a suburb, called Kirkwood), I was able to get a couple of runs in around the hotel.

The first day, I just started running, and I wasn't sure where I was going to go. Our hotel was right next to the highway with tons of shopping and office buildings everywhere, so I was wanting to just find a residential area and get a few miles in.

What I found, though, was priceless.

Hidden behind a bunch of office buildings and a shopping center, about a half mile from our hotel, I discovered the Laumeier Sculpture Park. Their website describes it as "105 acres of art and nature," and that is basically what it was. Tons of cement paths great for running as well as at least a mile or more of paths that ran into the woods. All of these paths are surrounded by various sculptures, so it made for a very interesting run. There were probably over 100 sculptures in the park.
Sugabus--the three-headed dog sculpture

The first day I was so intrigued that I found myself having to stop every now and then and look at some of the sculptures closer, and read about them. Some of them were amazing. The next day, I focussed on the trail portion of the park, and got in a couple miles of trail running, followed by another mile or so of path running, and some stair work too.

This park made for some really great running. I took my family there the day we left to show them where I'd been spending my running time.
Redwood II--the largest contemporary wood sculpture, according to the note at the base.

the appropriately named Eye sculpture...my kids loved this one the best

6 comments:

Carolina John said...

sounds like a really cool place to run! it's always great to find new things like that.

Pining for Pinterest said...

Looks like a great place to run! Great pictures :-)

Erin said...

What an awesome find!! Sculpture parks make for great distractions while running. There's a small one near my parents' house that I love to run through.

Mark said...

wow. Makes me wonder where the world's biggest eyeball is. That one looks like it should be up there!

Lindsay said...

what a fun find! glad you were able to take advantage of the park/scenery on vacation.

RunningLaur said...

That's crazy! What a great place to run!!