WELCOME to Creeping along the Blue Blazes!

We got an early start out of Cleveland so that we could get some BT biking/hiking done before the 3:00 pm check-in to our Independence Dam State Park campsite. Great idea failed from the start. We planned to meet at city park called Legion field in Defiance, around section point 5. Once we got there, we found that the field and expected parking lot were being developed for new housing construction, so had to park at a nearby hardware store. Then we went back to our starting point at Independence Dam Marina to begin biking. As we were eating lunch before setting out, April noticed an approaching black sky, even though weather forecasts had predicted pretty good days for this adventure. Change of plans- we decided to cancel biking and try to set up camp between periods of heavy rain due to roll in. So, we packed up our bikes, gathered Wendy’s car at the hardware store and proceeded to set up camp. As Wendy set up her tent, we put up our ‘pleasure dome’ over the picnic table – the rain slowly increased in intensity to the point where April and I didn’t even try to put up our tent – after about an hour the rain stopped, and we set up our tent. Because it was now just before dinner, we decided to drive into Defiance and walk through town, section points 7-5, then come back and eat. This was a good decision!

We started at Pontiac Park, where there was a stone memorial to an enormous apple tree, past a favorite fountain of Wendy’s (not!) spouting a strange shade of blue water, underneath A LOT of circling vultures. Next on our path was the public library again made with that copper-colored beautiful stone (see the church in Napoleon on previous entry), and Fort Defiance, which had a ton of historical markers! Apparently, this city played a large role in the War of 1812 and conflicts with native Americans as settlers moved west. The rest of the walk was uneventful except it was worth noting again how many beautiful churches could be seen. At the end we stopped in at a Dollar Store so Wendy could buy her 5th camping chair since she forgot hers, again, and I squabbled with the salesclerk about which face cloths to buy. When we told her we were hiking the BT she remarked that it might be too dangerous now-a-days to do it, she certainly would not attempt. Went back to camp, ate, lingered by a nice fire and crashed. Unfortunately, I woke up at night because the fire had rekindled itself enough to throw off a lot of light and flames, so I went out to extinguish it.

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We resumed our BT wanderings this year using our camping strategy to hike the increasingly far away sections and this time brought our bikes as many of the Defiance sections includes towpath along the Maumee River (which we learned is the largest river that empties into the Great Lakes- who knew?). We decided to camp at Independence Dam State Park near Defiance (section point 8), which is at the more southern end of this BT section. April and I took a lazy day drive out there and arrived in mid-afternoon only to have to set up camp in an unexpected shower. Wendy arrived shortly after us and was in the same predicament. We all managed to put up our awning from the car and attach some tarps to cover us and the bikes to make the light rain more bearable, and pretty much when we were all done the rain stopped. After dinner (July 4th leftovers) we decided to do a little test biking in the park, which was all part of the BT, and visited the dam and canal associated with it. It actually turned out to be a long ride as the length of the park from the entrance to our camp site was almost 2.5 mi! The site itself was great, totally at the end of the campground, fully shaded, and placed between the Maumee River and the canal. The bad was that a county road was on the other side of the canal so car noise was ever present but thankfully decreased at night…when distant trains made their presence known. There was not much privacy between sites but because we were camping mid-week there was rarely anyone else camping, certainly not near us. We all had fun trying out Wendy’s hammock but none of us thought we could sleep in it. So, we retired to our cots semi-dry and having some BT miles under our belts.

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Ventured back to Harrison State park campground this weekend for some Memorial Day hiking. Wendy and April drove down early Friday and secured the two primo campsites by the pond as there was nobody else there yet…a few more campers showed up around five o’clock, so that about half the sites were occupied- not too bad considering a BIG holiday weekend. I showed up at dinner time and we finished loading the tent with our ABUNDANT gear. Just about as we finished cooking dinner it started to rain- not real hard, just enough to force us to put up a tarp roof shelter (I’m sure it looked pretty shabby) and prevented us from making a fire. So we pretty much just sat and talked under the tarp and celebrated April’s “retirement” from CWRU by sipping some whisky and Baily’s she received as presents the day before.

It rained all Friday night and up until around noon on Saturday, so we had to downgrade our hiking ambitions a bit. We had planned on parking at Clendening Lake so we decided to check out Hillbilly Hideaway campground as a potential future campsite. Besides getting totally lost trying to find it, when we did arrive it was NOT what we expected- it was more of a permanent home for RVs/mobile home trailers (maybe only seasonal) because many had roofs built over them, or front porches added, etc. Most seemed pretty old also, so the whole vibe of the place was 1950s, including the playgrounds (two young boys gave us a hardy HELLO welcome when we first drove in, which was welcoming). Well, we were obviously lost, and Wendy hailed a nice old veteran named Dick, he set us straight on how to get to where we needed and that the Hideaway was not yet ready for short term tent campers- maybe next year?

We still got lost…ended up driving along a muddy, dirt road along the north side of the lake, and just as I was thinking we may get stuck the ‘road’ abruptly ended, confirming we had no clue where we were (we thought we would end up on SR 799). A pleasant surprise was that while we were trying to figure it out we were right next to the lake and surrounded by many swallow-tail butterflies who seemed attracted to a salt lick on the ground, they ARE beautiful creatures! We eventually found our starting point right down from the center of Deersville, and entered a lush green forest. Seemed even more amazing since the last time we hiked down here was before the trees had even leafed out. Came across a ‘sign-in’ box on the trail, which had some interesting entries from previous travelers, including through-hikers. Unfortunately the wooded trail only lasted about a mile and we came out of the woods to begin our road leg with the omni-present obnoxious hum of fracking facilities that seem to dot the landscape down here. Besides this, it was a pleasant back road to travel along with few cars.

To celebrate our first day we went back to Deersville, an official trail town, and ate some BT ice cream served up at the general store! Delicious on a hot afternoon! I had a nice chat with a gentleman named Bill, sitting on a bench out front, who was from up our way in NE Ohio and seemed to know everything and everyone in the village, as he split time down here. He told me there was only like 50 registered voters in the village- that’s tiny! He also highly recommended pretty much everything the store served up for food and the weekly Sunday barbeque! It was a real comfortable conversation- I can see why he knew everyone.

Our second day out April wanted to visit some sculpture artist property she had seen by Tappan lake- she thought it was a commercial business but it was just a private home with an owner who accessorized their property with their own rock creations- VERY interesting, as they used to say on Rowen & Martin’s Laugh-In years ago! We then hit the trailhead at the northwestern end of Clendening lake and were instantly transported back to a Jurassic Park like forest again, even more lush than yesterday, with an abundance of ferns of all shapes and sizes. There were many patches of cardinal flowers with striking red color. All was going GREAT until we hit the Hillbilly Campground turnoff- then it all became a struggle! We ran across impenetrable patches of prickly bushes that blocked the trail, induced by new sunlight opened in the forest canopy by downed, mature trees. You had to either fight your way through, go around and then lose sight of the trail, or typically BOTH! It was EXHAUSTING! It took us 6 hours to hike 4.5 miles through this mess. On emailing the BT later to report our troubles, we were told this is a problematic section because of microbursts causing havoc, as well as private owners logging their property. Apparently more to come in the next few sections- oh boy, road hiking looking better 🙂 We were all BEAT UP by the end of the day, each of us having taken a not-so-graceful fall along the trail. We just barely had enough energy to get back to camp, eat leftovers (although I treated myself to a frosty from McDs down the road- it was hot today), and we decided to skip any short hike the next day- better to go home and recover!

So this weekend was a mixed bag of good and bad, but we all agreed that this was probably among the most beautiful sections of the BT we have hiked so far. Let’s hope we find the stamina to power through the next few rough patches!

UPDATE: Turns out April wasn’t feeling well about two weeks after our hike and had a nasty looking bug bite mark on her torso with a developing rash, which turned into a bulls-eye, meaning Lyme disease! She went to local ER and got antibiotics for it so she should be on the road to recovery. They didn’t do any test for it, which seemed odd, just listened to her symptoms and figured it was a good guess since Harrison county is the highest Ohio county with Lyme disease! Beware!

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We’re BACK! Was predicted to be a great weather weekend so we (Wendy, April and I) decided to attempt our first camping road trip to far away BT trails…was not as smooth sailing as expected. We found free tent camping at nearby at Harrison State Park, which was close to Tappan Lake, and drove down on a late Friday afternoon so we had time to set up camp before dusk. Pretty minimal amenities, but not a lot of people and found a nice site in the western campground of park. April and I forgot the poles for our tent (mistake #1) so I scrambled to set up a lean-to with a rain fly we packed for our gazebo, not the tent rain fly (mistake #2). We settled in for the night and were greeted by many owls at dusk. It got colder than expected, so we went to bed early, April roosting in Wendy’s tent. We got off to a fairly slow start but once we arrived at our starting point we met Cindy and Holly (?) walking up the hill to see their neighbors lambs- had a nice chat with them, very friendly! It was nice back roads the entire day, going from asphalt to dirt, although it was MUCH hotter (80^o+) than we expected or were prepared for! Near the end of our day a friendly dog introduced us to his owner, who kindly let us fill our water bottles from his hose. We were dragging at the end (about 9 miles today!) as we crossed the dam at Tappan lake going toward our car parked at the spillway. As we were walking some random guy in a van pulled next to us and asked if we were hiking the BT, and when we answered “YES” he invited us to the Buckeye barn down the road for dinner and drinks as there was some Trail training event going on there and he thought we might like/need it (we probably looked the part). He patiently waited as we finished or hike and at our car he introduced himself, none other than “Steve Walker” president of the BTA! Who would have expected that good luck! The barn was an old beauty at the end of a long gravel road, very secluded, with acres of open fields surrounding it. Many tents were set up; Steve made some introductions, among them a friend that Wendy already knew who was there, but we were too tired and dirty to be sociable, so we drank some water and said our goodbyes. We did find out, however, that the general store nearby in Deersville makes some good sandwiches and offers a BT ice cream bar- colored blue of course- and some of the cost goes to the BTA if you buy one…sounds like a win-win! Also turns out that camping is free at the barn if you are a BTA member and let Steve know beforehand. Getting back to camp we quickly made a classic hot dogs & beans dinner for its simplicity and tried to stay up but faded fast into our sleeping bags.

Woke up the next morning to turkey calls… a lot of them! On April’s morning run to the restroom she had to wake up some camp neighbors from their pop-up tent because somehow their table had caught fire right at the time of her passing by- how lucky/strange is that? We planned our hike at about 5 miles today as it was all trails along the lake and not many places to park the car. This was a nice forest trail that went along and above the lake, up and down, with lots of good views- very pretty! The excitement of this day was crossing an apparently condemned footbridge over a stream! FYI we went across one at a time without incident, but it did look a little shaky and we honestly didn’t have the energy for a huge detour. Near the end, before the last long climb up the hill, there were a series of about 5 beaver dams next to each other, stacked like rice paddies into a mountain side, and we even saw the resident beaver swimming in the top pond! That was a perfect ending to a long hiking weekend and when we came into the open along the roadside we were greeted by a welcome breeze to cool off- even better. The long car ride back was somewhat of a struggle, but the weekend away rekindled our desire to keep plugging away at the BT!

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This is it! It is taking way too long to drive out here (2 hrs) to make it worthwhile for a one-day adventure, even with the increased miles we can cover on our bikes. We have to change our plans to include staying overnight camping to make the ride less of a grind. It really takes away from the joy of hiking/biking the BT. Anyways, so future blog posts will be more infrequent, but hopefully associated with bigger chunks of distance along with fun camping. Today was another all-roader except for a very BRIEF interlude of crushed stone path right outside of Pemberville. This path came out on acres of perfect rows of nursery plants to keep all those new suburban homes nice and greened up. If you looked up, the sky was dramatic but beautiful (another omen of a missed weather forecast). The roads we traveled were pretty much no wider than a tow path and exceedingly flat- just perfect for biking. Also barely any cars! It was very remote and you felt exposed with no crops in the fields to surround you. This also made it difficult to find the blue blazes, and at one point we thought they were painted on the road itself, but this turned out to be wrong. Still, it was super nice until Robin crashed into the rear derailleur of Wendy’s bike and essentially broke it off- I wasn’t close enough to the action to see what happened but imagine the Keystone Cops, or some other clown routine, here to capture the moment. We had 7 miles to go, so they walked and April and I peddled off to finish up and get the rescue car. The last leg was not much fun, a lot more main roads with traffic and… rain! There we go again- adding insult to injury! Never-the-less we got to the car, went back and rescued R&W (who had gotten surprisingly far on foot!) and on the long ride back we treated ourselves to some ice cream at Lulu’s, which you can’t miss. The sugar rush did a nice job of keeping us awake!

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Well, today we continue our string of bike riding the BT, this time pedaling out for 21 miles! The day started off with DRAMATIC skies, which should have forewarned us that the weather forecasters were about to mess it up again, just so we could get wet! The NCIT was long and straight to begin with, as usual, and ran through some nice small towns. We passed some gigantic grain (?) elevators, multiple times, and I am now beginning to appreciate just how important agriculture is to western Ohio. They dot the landscape everywhere, and go hand-in-hand with all the flat land we pass by. Just as we finished up the NCIT and were entering Elmore, we came to a nice shelter to stop and lunch, and a brief shower immediately started- WOW, what good luck for us we thought… unfortunately, we were soon to find out that idea was fantasy! Elmore was a historical town, log cabin and old train station and all- and we happily kept right on biking out of town on what seemed to be a brand new section of the NCIT. Then it dawned on me that this seemed too new, and of course we were not on the BT, and had to backtrack into town to find it again as it wiggled along small roads out of town. THEN it started, rain and wind-in-your-face, which made the going slow, tiring and not too pleasant- gosh we missed the NCIT, with the wind at our back! Too bad about the %^$#@& weather, because the roads we travelled were ideal back roads that ran along the Portage river and could have been quite scenic if I could see through my fogged up and rain-splattered glasses. We endured, though, and actually raced faster in the end when we saw some VERY dark clouds off in the distance, obviously pouring rain, that seemed much worse than anything we had yet experienced. Luckily the bad weather went south of us. Didn’t take any pictures after Elmore due to the rain, except of some chickens that were huddled for safety under a side-door porch roof as a turkey vulture was circling overhead- they are smarter than we give them credit! We finally came to Pemberville, again surprised that we all still felt kind of ok, but there was not much to the town- even the lure of a sign advertising fresh pastries was a disappointment- more like a bake sale in an antique store. Oh well, perfect finish to our day.

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Happy Spring! Happy Easter! Happy Pesach! Today we set out on a longer (15 mile) bike venture because the ‘trail’ was largely off road again. It took us a while to jockey around all the bikes and get the cars in place, but figured the miles gained was well worth the time spent. Our beautiful day started off with a long stretch of NCIT that was as flat and straight as if it was drawn up with a pencil and ruler. A leisurely pace brought us to the quiet little town of Clyde. As we came up to the town of Fremont we crossed over the Sandusky river, where some locals were fishing for walleye. When you look at a map we are now REALLY close to Lake Erie, so I guess the walleye are coming up river to spawn? On arriving at the much larger town of Fremont, we passed the home and memorial library & museum of president Rutherford B Hayes! This was a nice surprise and was quite the mansion and grounds. Spring was blooming all around us and his grave was tucked at the back of the property. There were also a few tourists milling around- it was a nice place to linger on a sunny day. After snaking through the surrounding neighborhoods (the BT was NOT well marked in town) we unfortunately ended up on route 20 for a stretch with no bike lane for a stretch. Ended up at Fremont trailhead lot where the NCIT picked up again. We all seemed to have survived our longer time spent on the saddle, so we will pick it up a notch on our next ‘hike’.

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Back to hiking! It was a little too cold to bike, and we were still trying to figure out some logistics for transporting them, but hopefully we can get ‘back on the saddle again’ next week! Today we are mostly following the North Coast Inland Trail (NCIT). Looking ahead- it seems like we will be on it for a while. It is a hard surface (crushed stone or asphalt), flat trail that seems to parallel a RR line for long stretches…ideal for biking. This is how it started out today- we took advantage of it being a beautiful Monday (yes, taking a vacation day) with not a soul on the trail. Looking at the plowed fields surrounding us I was surprised to see a lot of unearthed stones that looked like river rocks- with smooth, rounded surfaces- since we were no where near water I imagine it may have something to do with glacial deposits? Actually posted a very boring picture of one as an example- it was one of the more sizable ones I noticed. They were everywhere though. We finally came to the outskirts of Bellevue and came across the Mad River RR museum- it was not ‘open’ but you could walk around and peek into the windows of many engines and cars. Would be worth going back there. I’ve decided I must like trains- I take pictures of them whenever I can and am thrilled whenever one passes (did see one passing through Bellevue today). Bellevue seemed to be another town with a rich past, given the mansions we saw on the west side of downtown, but unlike Norwalk, main street was not doing that well now from the looks of it. There were beautiful old brick storefronts but they were largely vacant. It must have been a RR town back in the day, which would explain its decline. Near the end of our day we all remarked how good we felt for traveling 11 miles (although the last mile less pleasant). It was also REALLY nice to talk to each other along the way, which is definitely hindered by biking.

Our blog burner question for today is “Why and when was RR graffiti started?” Saw it on the passing train cars today- some of those people are really talented artists.

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Today is a new adventure for us!!! Because we have a lot of ‘rails-to-trails’ to cover in these sections we decided to try and bike it- weather was sunny and in the 50s- so almost perfect. Although it did take us a little longer to load/unload the bikes, we figured we would try about 11 miles and see how our bottoms held up. Not many walkers to worry about, which was good since our riding skills are rusty, and the terrain was VERY flat. Of additional interest, these sections of BT around Norwalk share the North Coast Inland Trails (NCIT), which runs along northern Ohio, and is clearly marked with signage along the way. The biking went by pretty fast (even though I’m slow, or as April put it, “the weak link” in the group) and before we knew it we were in the town of Norwalk, which was already known to April because of its fabric store with low prices and quality materials (luckily for me it was closed on Sundays). We had lunch in a little park and walked through the town, which was flanked on both sides by beautiful, historic old homes. This gave the impression that there was money at one time, not sure why, but it was still doing pretty well for itself by the looks of things. Very nice old theater and antiques store (couldn’t escape that one). It sure will be nice when COVID is over and we feel more comfortable going into places. A RR bridge after the town pointed out that the rail line we were biking went all the way to NYC- WOW! The rest of our trip was uneventful except that we almost ran over a baby snake crossing the path (I think it is a ‘brown’ snake- really, that’s its name). At the end, we decided our bottoms could have taken a little more riding if we had given them a rest, but we also decided that we DEFINITELY didn’t get enough time to talk very much! So maybe next bike outing we will ride a little further and take more ‘talking’ breaks.

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Well today started a lot faster since we had no parking issues at startup, planned to end at Collins Trailhead parking lot. Today started out on the road and finished up on a ‘rails to trails’ segment. We started right out with a VIGOROUS discussion about the challenges women face going pee on the trail or, more problematic, open road- which relegated me to a semi-interested bystander in the conversation. The talk centered on, how do I put this delicately, ‘engineering’ solutions and accessories to overcome these challenges that can be found on hiking websites, so we went over topics like zippered women’s pants that go from the front to the back…who knew? I don’t want to get into any more details here…do your own research. MOVING ON, the town of Wakeman was a nice little surprise of a town and seemed to have the bare essentials of a likable place- pizza joint, coffee shop, craft brewery establishment in a converted barn-like structure. Just before Wakeman there was also a very cool sculpture garden of iron works. After the town along a country road we saw some maple trees tapped to collect sap for maple syrup- seems its that time of year because we saw the same thing last week! More signs of spring are beginning to appear, like green grass sprouting up in the fields, snowdrop flowers in the woods, and the welcome sound of peepers from nearby marshes! On that note, as we were walking along a back road we were startled by a group (more than a dozen) of large grey birds which we now believe might have been migrating sand hill cranes. They were large, and they flew up from a low marshy spot, so we suspect they may have been feasting on all the peepers? That was definitely the highlight of the hike- too bad they were a good 100 yards off into the woods. Our day finished on the trail, which was a welcome relief to the bottoms of my feet.

So our new blog burner question is “were those really migrating sandhill cranes”? They certainly were grey, the size of herons and flew like them too (although they had to navigate up through the trees). Do herons and/or cranes travel in groups? Did not see any nests, so not a rookery.

Sherlock Answers: During migration, this species forms large flocks, which concentrate in vast numbers at certain areas during the journey, known as staging grounds. Small numbers of breeding sandhill cranes have been present in Ohio since 1985 and the number of nesting cranes has steadily increased over the last few years. They can be seen migrating through the state each fall to spend winter down south and then each spring to start nesting preparations.

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