Tom's National Park Adventure

My friend Ken Waterman and I left St Charles, Mo early Friday morning July 10th and headed east. We drove a little over nine hours and arrived at the Silver Springs campground in Stow, OH. The campground is a community owned campground and is located in a city park. We set up camp on a nice little site.

Ken is traveling with me all the way to Waterford, Maine where he is meeting up with some high school friends. They will be going on a fly fishing adventure. I will continue on to Acadia National Park where I will be meeting four of my kids and three of my grandkids.

We made this campground our first stop so we could spend Saturday exploring the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Saturday morning we made our way to the Boston Store Visitors center. While at the visitors center we learned a lot about the history of the area and how it became a national park.

In 1969 an interesting thing happened. Not for the first time and not for the last time, the Cuyahoga River actually caught fire! The river had become so polluted with chemical waste that it ignited! The ground swell to save the area gained a larger sense of urgency and in 1974 Gerald Ford signed a bill creating the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area. Congress voted in October of 2000 to then make the area into a National Park. The negative publicity that came about because of that fire was one of the main reasons the EPA was created.

One of the things that makes the history of this area important is that it is part of a manmade feat of engineering that helped to open the western frontier of our country. I am speaking about the Ohio canal. This canal was built in the 1820’s. It opened a waterway from Lake Erie to Cincinnati and the Ohio River. When combined with the more famous Erie Canal, goods and services could be moved from the east coast all the way to Cincinnati via water! It opened a huge opportunity in trade. The barges used on these waterways were towed by mules and there is now a Towpath Trail that covers 85 miles of the paths the mules used.

There are many things to see and do in the park. One interesting thing to do is to take a ride on the Cuyahoga. Alley Scenic Railroad.

We decided to do a couple of hikes. The first hike was to the Brandywine Falls. The water drops over a natural fall for over 65 feet!

We hiked the Stanford House to Brandywine Falls trail. It was just a little over four miles with lots of cool scenery to look at along the way.

We drove down to Szalay’s Farm and Market for lunch.

After lunch we found the Ledges trail. It was a two mile hike around some very interesting rock formations.

We dove to the Canal Exploration center and learned about the Ohio Canal.

We found a microbrewery in the town of Peninsula, OH and had a couple of beers and soft pretzels at the end of our day.

We drove back to our campsite just in time to catch this sunset!

All in all a great day!

This morning we got up early again and drove 9 1/2 hours to the Alp’s family campground (established in 1928!!! ) where we are spending the night. Tomorrow it is off to Maine!