Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Cuyahoga Valley National Park is the only national park in the state of Ohio, and we are lucky that it is less than an hour away from our home. It is the perfect day trip destination, with miles of trails to hike or bike. The park stretches from Cleveland all the way down to Akron and has some of the most beautiful scenery in northeastern Ohio.

Our plan was to go to Brandywine Falls first. We aren’t very familiar with the area and a road closed sign caused us to turn around before we got to the falls. The Boston Mills Visitor Center isn’t far from the falls so we went there to find an alternative route. The staff at the visitor center guided us right back to where we came from – the road closed immediately following the turn into the Brandywine Falls parking lot. The scenic drive to visitor center was well worth the delay in getting to the falls. The 60 foot waterfall is a spectacular sight from the boardwalk. A person could be tempted to walk a little closer, but warning signs are posted to discourage visitors from being too adventurous.

The next stop was Ledges Trail which is a 1.75 mile loop with spectacular rock formations and views. The trail is slightly treacherous, not the easy peasy hike we thought it would be the first time we went. There are several direction markers along the trail that lead to alternative routes. We evidently took a few wrong turns and thought, at one point, that we surely must have hiked all the way to Akron. Since we still had approximately 5 hours of daylight, we didn’t panic and just kept on walking. Our 1.75 mile “loop” turned into a 3 mile hike! We had a wonderful time and were both happy that we didn’t stay on the right trail.

We ended our adventure with a stop at Sonic – one of our favorites. A cheeseburger, corn dog, tater tots, onion rings, iced tea and a diet cherry limeade made a delicious treat for two hungry hikers.

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