Beautiful day!!! Also an interesting one. First of all, we wanted to hike from Crystal Springs trailhead to Clinton trailhead. Basically start at the Massillon-Akron junction and head north up towards Akron to finish the ‘Little Loop’! Well, we were initially surprised by the VERY short time of the hike (which of course I initially got blamed for), and it took us a while to figure out that we had parked in the middle of our outlined hike by mistake (so NOT my fault)! Luckily it was a good time to break for lunch under a picnic shelter in Clinton…which brought its own drama, and a good laugh, as an unfortunate couple was so eager to bike the towpath (maybe to lessen their arguments) that they left their truck door wide open! This led to a good Samaritan calling the police, who didn’t seem to know what to do about it, several notes left on the poor guy’s truck saying what happened as his car alarm went off, etc. Quite entertaining! We really felt like we should have entered the comedy since we saw it all unfold from our park bench, and laughed about talking to the police, leaving our own notes explaining the notes, or some such mischief. We decided the laugh was reward enough and we drove to the CORRECT parking lot this time and finished our intended hike. You will notice in the photos that the canal went from basically dry to full of water, and I never saw so many turtles in my life, so of course I had to take pictures! There was a lot of life in that stagnant canal, which I guess is a good thing. The Tuscawarus river on the other side of the towpath was bloated from recent rains, probably residual hurricane Laura. Tons of bikers and occasional hikers along the path, so you had to stay alert. We finished the day with tired feet and treated ourselves to ice cream from Oser’s in Canal-Fulton, which was a cute little town.
