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!
