What follows are some trail resources, followed by information and photos/videos from the trails I hiked. I hope this blog post encourages you to get out on our local park trails in 2024!
Hiking on the Buckeye Trail, starting two months after my open-heart surgery, was a big part of my recovering my strength, stamina, and balance. When I was contacted to be interviewed by Kimberly Perez from Spectrum News 1 on Monday, January 22, 2024, I thought it was very important to have the interview take place on the Buckeye Trail. I suggested she conduct the interview while we hiked together on the Buckeye Trail to the Bridal Veil Falls Scenic Overlook in the Cleveland Metroparks Bedford Reservation. These Falls are on a beautiful section of the trail that is easy to reach by a short walk from your car.
I arranged for my wife and co-blogger, Julie, to join us to take photos of the interview process. I am so glad that she was able to attend, since she captured the beauty of the area with her photography. The day after I posted photos, the Buckeye Trail Associationshared my Facebook post with their 11,000+ Facebook followers.
The temperature was in the 30s when Kimberly Perez and I starting talking while walking down the trail. She used her smartphone to record my answers to her questions, as I told my story of past backpacking trips; my debilitating HCM symptoms in the spring of 2023; and my recovery, which led to my backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail.
I was glad to read that so many people were interested in the 50
Years of Clean Water Investment event that The City Club had to create a waiting list!
For years, I have been interested in seeing what was beyond the Edgewater entrance gate of the sewer.
I was grateful to be one of the few fortunate people who were allowed to go on the tour.
I decided to create these three blog posts to remind me of the three days of fun I had over Father's Day Weekend. The
text is the same at the beginning of all three, so I encourage you to read the tweets within the posts that tell the
story of:
2 of 3: Fun Father's Day Weekend: Saturday -- Service Project
& The Longest Day of Play
Read tweets below in this blog post to learn about:
Northeast Ohio Orienteering Club (NEOOC) service project at Richfield Heritage Preserve
Be sure to click on the links in the tweets to learn about both of these great organizations!
Cleveland Metroparks “The Longest Day of Play” at Euclid Beach
Cleveland United Way 2-1-1 service
Plastic Free Lake Erie
Step Forward - Ohio's designated anti-poverty agency for Cuyahoga County with early childhood
education programs, adult skills training, and other services
Especially large waves on Lake Erie on this windy day. Be sure to view the videos of the waves.
Cleveland Metroparks Euclid Beach concessions serving Honey Hut Ice Cream
This blog post is about the creative and historical events I attended Friday, September 24, 2021, through Sunday,
September 26, 2021:
moCa Cleveland (Museum of Contemporary Art
Cleveland) and more in University Circle
In 2020 (pre-COVID-19 vaccine), I stopped going to moCa
Cleveland, so in 2021 (after being fully vaccinated), I had gotten out of the habit of looking to see what
the new exhibits were at the museum. Therefore, I greatly appreciated receiving the following Twitter direct
message on September 6, 2021, from @moCaCleveland reminding me to visit: "Stuart, have you been in to see our new
season? Just an fyi we have a new Sr Marketing Director . . . moCa hopes all is well."
Ingenuity at the Lake
When I first arrived at Ingenuity at the Lake, I
did not know what to expect. I ended up really enjoying some of the yard games with my family, and of course
talking to people from different organizations providing services to our community.
As I mention in my last blog posts, I have been "delayed" in my normal activities for much of the summer.
Well, the week after I published those two blog posts, my activity level increased dramatically
due to the large number of events happening in Cleveland the last week of August 2021.
This blog post is an attempt to capture some of the spirit of the events I attended. The one common element
of all these events is that I learned about them from following interesting people/organization on
Twitter. I created this blog post to serve as a reminder for me of the fun I had at these events, and
I hope it encourages you to go out yourself to learn about the organizations that sponsor these
events.
2020 has been different, with many of the venues we would normally visit closed due to the coronavirus
crisis.
We were very pleased when the Cleveland
Metroparks announced in May 2020 that they would be offering their fourth
annual Trail Challenge, which included 25 trails. In August 2020, we learned that the park updated the
list to include 35 trails!
The increase in the number of trails did not change the requirements for receiving the 2020
Challenge prizes . . .
. . . but we enjoy a challenge (and enjoy hiking/biking trails), and decided to do more than
the minimum. This blog post shares our journey on all but one of the remaining land-based trails. See Stuart's
2020 Trail Challenge tracker sheet with notes on the 33 trails.
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.