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.
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.
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.
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.
