Geauga Park District

Six Days: Ten Cleveland Metroparks and Orienteering in Geauga Park District

Cleveland Metroparks 2024 Trail Challenge

Welcome to the 2024 Trail Challenge, a guest led program where you are challenged to complete 10 trails in 10 different Cleveland Metroparks reservations on your own in 2024! Explore new trails, move to better health, discover the wonders of nature, and earn a prize.

My wife and co-blogger, Julie, and I have completed the Cleveland Metroparks Trail Challenge in the past, taking most of the year to do it. This year, I decided to do something different, and complete the challenge in one week. I picked the first full week of February (5 days: February 5-9, 2024) to hike "... in 10 different Cleveland Metroparks reservations ..." In total, I hiked five days on 14 trails in ten reservations, and worked out at a gym on four of the mornings. I also ended the week on Saturday, February 10, 2024, by attending a Northeastern Ohio Orienteering Club event where they had developed a new map for the Geauga Park District's The West Woods.

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!

Cleveland Metroparks 2024 Trail Challenge

Saturday, February 10, 2024 - 2024 West Woods Classic-O

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5 of 5: Exploring the Burton Section of the Buckeye Trail "Little Loop"

Burton Section - Buckeye Trail "Little Loop"

My plan was to slowly complete, by hiking and biking, all the sections of the Buckeye Trail "Little Loop" over several years. With the onset of the March 2020 COVID-19 crisis, my plans radically changed, and I decided to complete the "Little Loop" this year. Below is the blog post about the Burton Section, which is the fifth of five Buckeye Trail "Little Loop" blog posts.

This blog post covers my experiences on the Buckeye Trail Burton Section from Friday, August 21, 2020,  through finishing the "Little Loop" on Thursday, November 10, 2020.

I completed the Buckeye Trail "Little Loop" -- approximately 254.3 Miles -- at its Northern Terminus!!

I finished the Buckeye Trail "Little Loop" where I began, at the Northern Terminus

Buckeye Trail "Little Loop" Completion Patch - "I Completed The Little Loop"

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1 of 5: Buckeye Trail "Little Loop" - Exploring Over 250 Miles of Northeast Ohio

Buckeye Trail "Little Loop"

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.

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Social Distancing Park Visits - June 2020

Social Distancing Park Visits - June 2020

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.

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.

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Social Distancing: Visiting More Parks and Park Campsite Information

Social Distancing: Visiting More Parks

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:

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.

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Social Distancing with Park Walks & Online Life

Julie demonstrates -- "Do your part! Stay 6 feet apart! Please help us to keep our parks open!"

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: 

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

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Peaceful Parks While Social Distancing

 Canada Goose in Cleveland Metroparks on March 20, 2020

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.

Safe Practices When Visiting Cleveland Metroparks During Coronavirus (COVID-19)

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