Trails

Take the challenge!

In 2017, we wrote our blog post: Cleveland Metroparks Inaugural Trail Challenge!

. . . so when we saw the Cleveland Metroparks tweet to "Take the challenge!" in 2020, with 25 trails to choose from, we decided to accept.

With COVID-19 closing venues we normally frequent, and having to cancel the backpacking trips that Stuart had planned on the Continental Divide Trail and Appalachian Trail, we have been exploring many parks in Northeast Ohio and along the route of the Buckeye Trail. We have written about many of our park visits in the Social Distancing Blog Posts that we have been writing during the pandemic.

There were originally 25 trails to choose from for the challenge. During the time we were writing this blog post, we learned that the park updated the list to now include 35 trails!

What follows is information about the first ten challenge trails we have completed.

On Saturday, July 18, 2020, I rode my bike on 6.1 miles of Ohio's Buckeye Trail in Lake County, which is part of Buckeye Trail's "Little Loop." The "Little Loop" is the over-250-mile part of the Buckeye Trail in Northeast Ohio that goes through the following counties: Lake, Cuyahoga, Summit, Stark, Portage, and Geauga.

Normally, I would not write a full blog post on one bike ride, but this ride was noteworthy for the following two reasons:

• First, the Penitentiary Glen Reservation has some very unique resources that I want to share.

• Most importantly, July 18th was a special day, and my 6.1-mile piece of the Buckeye Trail was part of a larger effort: The 4th Annual Little Loop Challenge!

A BIG thank-you and congratulations to Buckeye Trail Board Member Randall Roberts for successfully organizing over 50 hikers and bikers in collectively completing the "Little Loop" section of the Buckeye Trail in one day! I really like the event's tagline -- "Together We Hiked It All" --  since it conveys how people come together to reach a larger goal.

Ending my bike ride at Penitentiary Glen Reservation was an excellent decision!

After writing three social distancing blog posts about visiting our local parks during the coronavirus crisis, we really did not plan to write anymore blog posts on this subject. However, we have been having such a great time exploring parks that we had not visited before, and revisiting old favorites, that we decided to gather tweets from park visits in June 2020, to create this blog post.

This blog post accomplishes two things that are important to us.

• First, writing this post is our way to refresh our memory of the time we spent together. Time together in the peaceful environment of a park is a healthy way to be grounded, both as a couple and for each of us individually, during these stressful times in our country.

• Secondly, it is our way to thank the park systems for their service to our Northeast Ohio community. Visiting parks (if you also practice social distancing and sanitizing your hands) is one of the very few safe activities you can do during this COVID-19 pandemic.

Please note that we have attended many more parks in June 2020 than those included in this blog post. Beyond what we include here, Stuart has been doing section hikes on the Buckeye Trail "Little Loop" (the Buckeye Trail Little Loop is over 250 miles long in Northeast Ohio), and we have done eleven additional hikes as part of the Cleveland Metroparks Trail Challenge 2020. We plan to write blog posts about these trail activities when we complete them.

As we wrote in our other Social Distancing blog posts about exploring our local parks, we continue to be fortunate to have had no illness or death in our family.

We are writing this blog post to:

• First, encourage ourselves to learn about and explore parks that we have not visited before, or further explore past favorites.

• Secondly, capture some of what we learn to share with others now, and to use in future years to remind us of how fortunate we are to have so many great park systems in our area.

We are both sad about activities we love being canceled for 2020, but we want to acknowledge all that we have gained in terms of time together learning about local parks and about each other.

We start this blog post with information about how to be safe in the parks during this coronavirus crisis. We also want to note that we added at the end of the blog post information about camping opportunities in our local park systems.

I have now written several social distancing blog posts during this time of the coronavirus crisis, about how I spend my time -- with park walks and online activities. I have also been attending some Facebook Live events about hiking trails, which I am featuring in this blog post.

During these sad times, I want to first acknowledge how fortunate I am that everyone in my family is healthy, and that I have the luxury of being able to participate in, and write about, interesting social distancing activities.

Secondly, I want to thank the organizations that are investing their time and resources to create these live video events featuring hiking trails. It is helping take the sting out of the fact that I was scheduled to be on a long-distance backpacking adventure at this time. I appreciate being able to join others online to celebrate trail life. Thank you!

The sections of this blog consist of:

• Two #CelebrateTrails events on April 18, 2020, with the Cleveland Metroparks and the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy

• Several Continental Divide Trail #VirtualTrailDays events that occurred throughout the month of April and early May

Looking for humor and creativity on the Twitterverse, and visiting parks while social distancing is what my life mainly consists of currently. There is also a lot of sadness about plans being canceled, but my family has been fortunate to have had no illness or death. I try to support those that I see online that are making a difference in our community.

While no day of COVID-19 social distancing is the same, the typical day often contains the following elements: 

• Absolutely no consistency in mornings

• Forenoon - Twitter online distractions

• 2:00 pm coronavirus #InThisTogetherOhio updates from Ohio Governor Mike DeWine

• Afternoon walk in local parks to help deal with coronavirus-related stress

• Evenings are spent watching online movies

In this blog post, I share my experience visiting local parks, and my online life during these coronavirus crisis times.

This blog post will share how we used our fantastic, local parks to deal with coronavirus-related stress starting, on Monday, March 16, 2020. An important part of health is mental health -- go for a walk for both physical and mental health!

We include information in this blog post about using the parks safely during this crisis, and resources to learn more about local parks. We have also included tweets about local restaurants from which we got food "to-go," on our way to or from the parks. It is important to support local business where possible at this time.

We want to thank our local park systems for their work to provide a safe place to explore.

Weekend Journey: New York & Massachusetts Parks, and Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association (ALDHA) Gathering

Every year, we go to the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association - ALDHA Gathering weekend for workshops on how to backpack the great trails around the world. Normally, we make it a four-day weekend (including traveling), but this year we added some extra days on each end of the trip. These extra days enabled us to see some great New York State Parks with beautiful waterfalls, and more of the park where the Appalachian Trail crosses the highest mountain in Massachusetts.

It was fun to "bookend" our trip to the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association - ALDHA Gathering with waterfalls. We write our blog posts to share what we learn about organizations and about places that we enjoy. We hope you will share them with others.

What a day! We attended Cleveland's second Rails-to-Trails Conservancy Opening Day for Trails - Cleveland on Saturday, April 13, 2019, at Cleveland Metroparks' Merwin's Wharf. We knew to expect a great event, but the very large participation of Clevelanders interested in learning about Cleveland's urban trails was beyond what we had expected.

I first learned about the Cleveland Metroparks Adventure University a year ago. It looked like somethng I would really enjoy, but we were dealing with a family emergency that kept me from attending the Spring of 2018. When I saw on Twitter that the third annual Cleveland Metroparks Adventure University & Gear Swap would be taking place at Baldwin Wallace University on Saturday, March 23, 2019, I was doubly excited to attend. First, I saw that they had exciting organizations participating, and workshops planned in areas that greatly interested me. Secondly, my annual case of "Springer Fever" had set in, and I was ready to learn from presenters about my future adventures.