Cuyahoga Valley National Park

On our long drive back east, we passed right by Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, so we had to make a quick stop for a hike. The Cuyahoga Valley is located between Cleveland and Akron and the Cuyahoga River is famous for, among other things, catching on fire. This happened at least 13 times, and the June 22, 1969 fire helped to bolster the beginnings of the American environmental movement. In 1974, the Cuyahoga Valley was designated a National Recreation Area, then on October 11, 2000, was made a national park.

Boston Mill Visitor Center

We didn’t have much time at Cuyahoga, and the one hike that you do if you only have time for one hike at Cuyahoga is the Ledges Trail, which is what we did. If the parking lot at Brandywine Falls wasn’t closed, we might have also tried to sneak in a glance at a waterfall, but that wasn’t in the cards for this visit. The Ledges Trail is a 1.8 mile loop that circles a plateau of rock formations. The trail network around the Ledges Trail also includes several cut-through trails and side trails that connect to other areas of the park. The trail is primarily dirt and rock, with rock steps in several places. Along the way, you walk at the bottom of and between rock cliffs that are fun to explore but difficult to fully capture in photos.

Ledges Trail

The trail passes by a cave, but to protect the bats there from white-nose syndrome, caused by the white fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans that can decimate bat populations, the entrance was barred. There’s also an overlook, the Ledges Overlook, that didn’t seem to be overlooking anything of much significance. Especially in late spring and summer with the trees filled with leaves, you mostly just see a lot of trees with leaves. The rest of the trail makes up for It, however. And as we were nearing the end of the trail, we spotted a barred owl, out in the evening, our first time seeing an owl in the wild.

Barred owl

Cuyahoga Valley National Park is slightly unusual in that it can almost be described as an urban national park, with 4 million people living within a half hour drive of the park. Parts of the park either abut and/or are managed by Cleveland Metroparks, Summit Metro Parks, or private owners. Besides the ledges, it contains waterfalls, wetlands, ravines, forests, and more. The Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad goes through the park and offers scenic railroad rides throughout the year. There is no fee to enter the park, though we still made a quick stop at the Boston Visitor Center to talk to the park ranger, and pick up a map and stamp. There’s plenty we didn’t get to see in the park, so we might be back if we’re ever in the area, though I also still have about 400 (of 423) National Park Sites and hundreds and thousands of state and local parks to visit.