Bike

The Buckeye Trail "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. On Tuesday, November 10, 2020, at the northern terminus of the Buckeye Trail at Headlands Dunes State Nature Preserve, I completed the loop which I had begun on Sunday, November 4, 2018.

I want to start this blog post by thanking the Buckeye Trail Association, and in particular, the volunteers of their Crooked River Chapter, for making the "Little Loop" section of the trail a reality for me to enjoy!

This Buckeye Trail "Little Loop" blog post actually consists of five separate blog posts. First, this post includes information and resources about the Buckeye Trail that were shared at events I attended about the trail.

The other four posts are about each of the four sections of the "Little Loop." Here are links to the blog posts, along with a list of the counties and some of the parks that are part of each section.

When we wrote about completing the first level of the Cleveland Metroparks 2020 Trail Challenge presented by Cigna to earn our 2020 Trail Challenge stickers, we were already working on the next ten trails for the final challenge. We are creating our Trail Challenge blog posts for these three reasons:

• To capture our memories for us to re-read in the future.

• To encourage others to take the Trail Challenge this year and in future years.

• And as we wrote in our last trail challenge blog post:

  We want to thank the Cleveland Metroparks for planning this annual Trail Challenge, and Cigna for sponsoring it again this year! Particularly this year, with everyone in the world facing the health crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, it has been important for both physical and mental health to have our local parks to visit.

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 are happy to share with you our experiences on the second level of the trail challenge to earn our 2020 Trail Challenge mug.

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!

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. 

Due to commitments at home, this is the first vacation in quite a while where we both were free to take a week-long trip. Because of this, we decided to write this blog post about the different locations we visited in Michigan from June 24 through July 1, 2018. We are sharing our 100 @sos_jr tweets and retweets to show our activities and our photos.

While not a perfect trip, in that we ended up needing to cut it short by two days, we created this post so we can look back on it to remind us of the fun we had and to share it with visitors to our blog.

• Monday, June 25, 2018 - #MightyMac

• Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - #MackinacIsland

• Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - @GrandHotelMI

• Thursday Morning, June 28, 2018 - #CastleRock and #Fudge

• Thursday Afternoon/Evening, June 28, 2018 - #SeeFrankenmuth

• Friday Morning, June 29, 2018 - @Bavarian_Inn

• Friday Afternoon, June 29, 2018 - @BronnersXmas

• Trip Home and After

Happy traveling!

Every year, because of my personal history, I always think that April 7th is a special day to explore a trail! So when I saw Bike Cleveland's tweet announcing that on Saturday, April 7, 2018, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy would have a Cleveland location for its annual Opening Day for Trails, I knew that I would need to attend! 

As I learned more about the day from Share The River's blog, and very informative @ShareTheRiver tweets, I grew more impressed with the strong partnership of organizations in Cleveland that were coming together on April 7th to promote trails and good environmental stewardship in northeast Ohio. The day's activities were hosted by the Cleveland Rowing Foundation.

Reading about the Facebook event, 2018 Opening Day for Trails - Cleveland, also excited me by mentioning the Ohio & Erie Canalway Towpath Trail and the Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail. I have enjoyed exploring both of these trails, and writing about them in some of my past blog posts.

The Cleveland Metroparks introduced their new Trail Challenge on National Trails Day, June 3, 2017!! It was very appropriate, since the Trail Challenge reflects the spirit of National Trails Day by encouraging people to enjoy the great outdoors and to explore trails in the Cleveland Metroparks.

In this blog post, I will share information about my journey on the 10 required trails (and beyond!!), for the 2017 Trail Challenge through:

• My @sos_jr tweets/retweets

• My comments about what I observed

• Information about the parks featured in this first Trail Challenge.

On September 8-10, 2017, the largest annual cycling festival in the United States, NEOCycle, was held in Cleveland at the Cleveland Metroparks Edgewater Park, through the support of the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission! This was my third year attending what has become a great Cleveland tradition!