Cuyahoga Valley

From Wikipedia – This park along the Cuyahoga River has waterfalls, hills, trails, and exhibits on early rural living. The Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath Trail follows the Ohio and Erie Canal, where mules towed canal boats. The park has numerous historic homes, bridges, and structures, and also offers a scenic train ride.

• Established: 10/11/2000
• Annual Visitors: 2,096,053
• Size: 32,572 acres

Elizabeth:

Yesterday (6/13/2020) Gary and I flew from our home in Phoenix, on American Airlines, through Dallas to Cleveland for our first National Park vacation since this whole Covid 19 pandemic started. Our last NP adventure was in January. Upon landing at 7pm, the Cleveland airport was completely empty!  Kind of freaky really. Our relatively small plane disembarked and our whole wing of gates and all restaurants, gift shops etc. were abandoned. Our carousel was the only one being used and there were 8 of them in baggage claim. We picked up a rental car and headed south.

We only decided to come to Cuyahoga Valley NP when researching our decision to get a puppy. (The park is pronounced Ki, like pie, au, hog, like jog, au. Cuyahoga.) We had made the decision to get another dog and in researching, I found an Amish family in Millersburg, OH with the perfect Silver Labrador Retriever puppy we were searching for. Millersburg is south of Cleveland and Cuyahoga VNP is between Cleveland and Millersburg, so whaala! Mini vaca to go get “Rangeley” our new 8-week-old buddy after our NP adventure!

We booked two nights at a Hampton Inn in Richfield, 4 miles from the Park’s main visitor center. After packing up some snacks and water, a park map and bundling up a bit, we headed out at 6:30am. Coming from 109 degrees in Phoenix, the 50 degree weather, blue skies, evergreens, Maples, Sycamores and streams were a perfect start to a fabulous day of hiking!

We parked at the Boston Mill Visitors Center which, online, said was closed but we talked with three different rangers working nearby and were pleased to know the gift shop would be open by 10am to get our commemorative pin, post card and stamp our NP book.

From the Boston Mills VC, we walked the 2.5 miles to Brandywine Falls. The route was a short walk on a small road to catch the wonderful Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail. The canal was built in the early 1800s and the traffic supported a small village that was built between 1820 and 1840. Many of the buildings are still standing. The canal connected Cleveland and Akron with over 50 locks along the almost 50 mile canal. Most of the locks are still visible, but the canal has become overgrown. The Towpath is hard packed gravel and enjoyed by joggers, bikers, walkers and happy dogs on leash. We then transitioned to a forested area, past the historic Stanford House (currently closed lodging, due to Covid) and remained in the woods all the way to the Falls.

The Brandywine Fall’s visitors were very pleasant, friendly couples, small groups of girl’s Sunday out, families, and a few senior citizens alike.

After our over 5-mile round trip to the Falls we headed by car to another NP gift shop in nearby Peninsula, OH. It too, is on the Towpath which runs from Cleveland to south of Akron. There were many visitors renting bikes, getting ice cream, enjoying a draft beer on patios and socializing in the small village area. After going into the second NP gift shop we stopped at The Winking Lizard Restaurant for a beer and potato skins on a patio watching all the smiling faces enjoying being outside on a great sunny and mid 70’s June day! We really enjoyed seeing everyone out and about, enjoying a beautiful Sunday. It was a wonderful reprieve from the news of today (coronavirus and racial tensions).

Our next adventure of the day brought us to The Ledges. An incredible wooded 2.5+ loop from Happy Days Lodge parking lot. The 60-foot ledges of stone, tower over you as you walk the fabulous soft packed and rooted dirt trail. Growing up in Vermont, it was wonderful to smell the ferns, fertile soil and hear the birds and wind through the large green trees!

Our last stop of the day was to see Kendal Lake. The third fun adventure inside the park. We drove to the lake from The Ledges and read about the 1930’s Conservation Corp built boathouse for swimming and fishing which still stands. Today you can still fish and kayak the small lake but it is quite overgrown and filling in with natural plants like cat tails. There’s ample parking and you can walk around the lake and explore further on cross country ski trails in the surrounding area.

We returned to the hotel, had take-out pizza, took a nap and were grateful for the fun filled, athletic and educational day. We have thoroughly enjoyed every park we have visited. It has been great to get out and travel again, we sure have missed it. We love seeing new places and meeting the locals. Ohio has been very clean with lots of green rolling hills. We also hit the weather perfectly, which certainly helps.

Day 2 – Meeting our new puppy (Gary)

After a wonderful day in the National Park we rose early to drive about 60 miles through central Ohio farm country to Millersburg, to pick up our new silver lab puppy, Rangeley. This was the main purpose of this visit, the park was a great bonus. We were very impressed with how pretty this area is. We travelled mostly on back roads, avoiding the main roads. The people in this area take great pride in their property as most everything was very well maintained. Even the coffee shop we stopped at was terrific. A retired couple owns and operates it. The husband grew up in the very small town and is a retired carpenter. After a quick breakfast it was onward to meet Rangeley. He was born on a small Amish farm run by a young couple with their 18-month-old daughter. Elizabeth had stuck up a wonderful friendship with Loriann over the phone. Yes, they have a land line. No power, computer, cell phone, etc. We loved everything about the family and of course little 8 week old Rangeley. We got to meet 2 of his littermates (3 had already been picked up) and his mom, Roxy, who is super sweet. On the farm are sheep, a donkey (to protect the sheep from coyotes) and two horses to alternate pulling their buggy. This area has many Amish families (roughly 50%), so you need to take extra caution as there are many horse-drawn buggies on the roads. After a 2 hour visit we took off to explore the area on our own.

That evening we returned to pick up the family and take them to dinner. They are allowed to ride in cars but do not own one or drive. The husband works as a carpenter and got home at 5:30. He had his evening chores to do first so it was 7pm when we picked up the family. With it being late, a Monday and the COVID virus, there was only one choice to eat-in. After dinner we headed to the local ice cream shop for dessert, then back to the farm at sunset (9pm). They invited us to come into their house, so we did. Loriann was showing Elizabeth her two sewing machines (that run on a 12-volt battery with a solar charger) that were in a beautiful handmade cabinet built by her dad. The daughter started bringing me books to read. She would bring two at a time and sit on my lap to go through them page by page. I think we had about 15 books by the time we needed to leave. This is a very brief recap, we learned a great deal about the Amish way of life due to the couple being very open and willing to teach us. What a wonderful family, we were so glad we found them on our puppy search and intend to see them again at some point.

The travels home the next day went very smoothly. Rangeley was great on the two flights at our feet in a carrier and on our lap at times and in the airports. The poor pup had only been on a quiet farm then gets in a car for a 90 minute drive, hangs out at an airport, flies to Dallas, takes a train to another terminal and then flies again to Phoenix, all with no accidents or crying.

It isn’t often we have done an adventure where we had really high expectations and were still able to exceed them. Rangeley is wonderful with a great mom and Amish family. The Park was beautiful and we loved Ohio.

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