Jeff and Serena US Road Trip: Cuyahoga Valley, Ohio

Thursday, 9/20

Six hours driving today and we ended up in the vicinity of Cuyahoga Valley National Park (close to Akron, Ohio). The park is a little confusing so we were pleased to get to the visitor center before they closed. From there we proceeded to nearby Stow, Ohio. They have a simple municipal campground with electric sites for only $15/night. Electricity was great ‘cause we were using our AC in the evening to escape the warm and sticky. After dinner we read all our park literature and we were ready for exploring the park tomorrow. We didn’t sleep with the AC on but might have wished we had; it was very humid.

A bit about Cuyahoga Valley National Park

The park is small and crisscrossed with roads and studded with tiny villages and private property. As such, there is no entrance station/fee. The park runs North/South along the Cuyahoga River and the former Ohio & Erie Canal. The canal was a major shipping transportation project that opened in 1827. There were also passenger boats on the canal. By the 1860’s, railroads supplanted the canal for both shipping and passenger service. When the canal was still functional, the boats were towed along by horses or mules on the adjacent towpath. The Towpath Trail starts in Cleveland and is 85 miles long; about 20 miles are in the NP. The present day canal is an overgrown ditch. In addition to the Towpath Trail there are numerous small hikes at various places in the park.

Friday, 9/21

We explored the park a bit today. We did a 2ish mile loop hike called Ledges because of the rock formations in the area. We walked a tiny portion of the Towpath Trail by Beaver Marsh and saw a couple of turtles and two Great Blue Herons. It wasn’t really the right time of day to see the Beavers, Otters, or Muskrats that also live in the marsh. (We saw Groundhogs around our campground but they were camera shy.) Our last stop in the park was Brandywine Falls.

We could have gone back to last night’s campground but there was no reason not to move a little bit towards our next destination. And we want someplace cooler tonight. We ended up in Geneva-on-the-lake, OH (Lake Erie). This is clearly popular as a summer destination but today it looked a bit abandoned. Our RV park is huge and has everything we wanted (showers, electric, wifi). Also, it is a little cooler. We used the AC a bit but most of the evening just the fan and we slept comfortably.