Cuyahoga Valley National Park: Over 125 miles of hiking trails are available for your hiking pleasure. These trails range from nearly level to challenging, and pass through various habitats including woodlands, wetlands, and old fields. Some trails require you to cross streams with stepping stones or log bridges, while others are nearly level and are accessible to all visitors.
In the morning, Dave, the pups, and I piled into his truck and set off toward CVNP again. We started off at the Plateau Trail and did some mix of that and Oak Hill. Steep inclines are not for me. Thankfully, there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of them, because I don’t know if I would make it. I do love these trails though, full of towering trees and a canopy of leaves. There used to be some kind of lake along the way, but as we passed it there was some kind of bulldozers and other big machinery out there. Booooo. Our beasts are lead the way, venturing off the trail every now and then to chase some scent or creature, but they always come back. The weather is perfect, the dogs are happy, and I am too.
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| Neville |
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| Frank |
A restaurant named the Winking Lizard is nearby and we head there for lunch and some local beers while the beasts catch their breath in the truck. The day is young and we aren’t exhausted yet so we decide explore another spot, Indigo Trail. Dave gets in the truck and I would like to, but Neville will not budge from the passenger seat. Will. Not. Budge. I eventually sit on him, thinking he will hate it and move, but no, he gives in to it and just pants behind me while we drive. It was not the most comfortable ride, but it was short and I was entertained.
Indigo Trail begins just across the railroad tracks. There is a lake where people are fishing right off the bat and the pavement gives way to the gravel trail just past that. Dave shows me a cool trick from his childhood where he searches for a great stick, hits the stick against a type of leaf, and the stick breaks. Wow, cool trick, Dave! He swears that’s not it, finds another stick, and this time slices right through the leaf- easy peasy, stick still in tact. The dogs had fun making this their own game- try to get the stick while it’s in motion. I give it a try and it’s more fun than it probably sounds. This trail is wide, has benches and picnic tables along the route, briar patches that only my a-hole dog ran through, and then the land opened up into a huge field on the other side of the lake. Sounds of nature filled the air, with the occasional hack from one of our dogs, and beautiful views were all around.
It also dawned on me that for someone who is always really hot, I was barely sweating after hiking all day. Have I mentioned that I love this weather? By the end of this trail, the dogs are worn out but trying not to show it. They lag behind, much closer to us, and only occasionally get a small burst of energy and try to run ahead of one another. Neville gets back into his rightful seat for the ride home and I notice that he ripped one of his nails up pretty good, but he doesn’t seem to notice. We covered a lot of ground today and I celebrated with a two hour nap when we returned.
The last hike the gang went on was at Worden’s Ledge. We parked next to a house and off into the woods we go. There are many boulders lining the trail and soon carvings appear. The story is that the Worden family lived at the house and the house was left to one of the daughters, Nettie. After two of her husbands passed away, she married the third at age 80 and he was 64, Noble Stuart. He did most of the carvings along the path within 3 years after Nettie died, basically to give him something to do and keep his skills up. He carved her name, faces of family members, and anything else he wanted to. Also along the path- mud puddles. Davinci was the first to embrace them and ran right through; Dave’s reaction was hilarious. Frank and Neville dabbled, but weren’t too interested in playing in it.
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| Davinci's Mud Socks |
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| H.M. Worden, Nettie's Dad |
Neville was interested in one new smell, however. Horse manure. Horses are also taken on this trail for whatever reason, but these mighty beasts are brand new to my pup. Then it happened, a horse appeared on the trail. I’m once again curious if Neville will be scared or want to play, so I hold him by the leash just off to the side as the horse passed. I don’t know what his intentions were, but he wanted to GO. He got a whiff, saw it pass by, and he needs this animal in his life. Too bad, puppy. One kick to the head and that’s the end of the story. We go a little further down the trail and my bag starts to leak. A spill! No big deal, we stop and I’m getting the bag back in order, and I look around. Somethings missing. Someone. Neville is not anywhere in site. SHIT, THE HORSE! I start back up the trail, calling for him to come back, imagining worst case scenarios. Frank trails behind me, being a helpful pup. Then sure enough, I hear my boy making his way back in a hurry. He’s trying to anyway. I think being in the mountains and having the boulders all around kind of threw him off from where exactly to go, but he did find me. Whew. That turd most definitely took off after that horse the second he had the chance, and I mean front and back paws meeting under his stomach, greyhound-style took off. I want to ring his neck and smother him with love all at once, so I settle for a pat on the head and a stern talking to.
After a while we come across picnic tables and stop for a water break. Frank hops up on the table and Neville decides to copy him. Cute. The rest of the hike is pretty uneventful (thankfully). More beautiful green coverage, more cicadas, more snake jokes from Dave. He points at something in the trail and I panic; turns out he was just pointing to a frog, but he thought it was funny. We talk about hitting up another trail up the road. Making our way back to the starting point wasn’t nearly as fun because inclines. Then Dave stopped and told me to stop.. very funny, I’m thinking. Got me once when you didn’t even mean to, I’m not falling for it this time. But nope! Right there in the middle of the trail is the demon reptile, one of my two biggest fears of this trip, directly in front of us. I call Nev and we back it way up and Dave shoos the snake away. I think. I might’ve blocked it out, actually, because I don’t remember what he did or where it went, I just remember having the adrenaline rush to get up the rest of that incline as fast as I could.
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