Stow, Ohio
June 2–3, 2022
June 2–3, 2022
I stayed at Silver Springs Campground in Stow, about a 15-minute drive from Cuyahoga Valley National Park. After the surreal majesty of parks like Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Joshua Tree, White Sands, Grand Canyon, Big Bend, and Petrified Forest, my 21st and final national park of the trip (22nd, if you also count the national monument I visited in Arizona!) was a quieter kind of wonder. Honestly, it was the first time in six months that I felt on familiar ground, like I was back in the northeast, even though I was still in Ohio.
The dogs and I took a nice little hike on the Ledges Trail, which is so mossy it looks almost like the Pacific Northwest and features bizarrely beautiful rock formations. Some of my closeup photos of the rocks almost seem like they could be telescope photos of galaxies. I didn’t get to explore Icebox Cave, since it’s closed to protect the resident bats from White-Nose Syndrome, but the sight of a forbidden, gated-off cave entrance was pretty cool too.
It was also here that I figured out that the cool orange-yellow-green flowers I’d found on the trails outside Mammoth Cave belonged to tulip poplars. I saw a bunch of them dropped on one spot and started looking at the trees around me until I noticed the distinctive, spatulate shape of tulip poplar leaves and exclaimed aloud, “Aha! It’s you!” (I’m great in public. I seem totally normal.)
The dogs and I took a nice little hike on the Ledges Trail, which is so mossy it looks almost like the Pacific Northwest and features bizarrely beautiful rock formations. Some of my closeup photos of the rocks almost seem like they could be telescope photos of galaxies. I didn’t get to explore Icebox Cave, since it’s closed to protect the resident bats from White-Nose Syndrome, but the sight of a forbidden, gated-off cave entrance was pretty cool too.
It was also here that I figured out that the cool orange-yellow-green flowers I’d found on the trails outside Mammoth Cave belonged to tulip poplars. I saw a bunch of them dropped on one spot and started looking at the trees around me until I noticed the distinctive, spatulate shape of tulip poplar leaves and exclaimed aloud, “Aha! It’s you!” (I’m great in public. I seem totally normal.)
