This is the collected and revised edition of posts about Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Is took a while to get through all the photo posts and write blurbs so I hope you enjoy the effort to gather them together with an attempt at a narrative thread. It still required quite a bit of copy to transition the parts as well as get it to make some sort of sense as a documentary style story. Two dozen photos and 1600 words is my largest article on the platform.
Enjoy the pictures!
My father’s first sister lives close to me in the Chicago area, we left to make the drive East on the tollroad at a decent time on a Thursday morning. The both of us were headed to meet her younger sister near Akron, Ohio for a long weekend visiting Cuyahoga Valley National Park. My other aunt lives in western Pennsylvania and had a much shorter drive.
Straw House Along the Cuyahoga
When we pulled up on the house, I thought it was kinda unassuming. As things would turn out, where we stayed for the handful of days was an excellent base for us to stage our daily excursions.
We were in the area at the very beginning of autumn and these pictures are very seasonally oriented. I should have taken more pictures of the house, it had some nice features too. However, the real highlights of the trip were the waterfalls and foliage in my opinion.
Classic Cuyahoga
This picture encapsulates those fundamental aspects of our trip to Cuyahoga: color-changing leaves and running water.
I hope you get sense of what Cuyahoga Valley National Park has to offer from the photos I’ve selected for this article. It's definitely worth going during the autumn for the display the leaves put on. Also, some of the locations I was taking these pictures would likely be inaccessible in the spring when there is more water flowing, meaning higher creaking and streams.
This is Cuyahoga to me
As mentioned earlier, I went to this park with my aunts for a few days.
The picture above essentially sums up the highlights of the experience for me: hiking, foliage, waterfalls.
It was a very thorough trip, I'm sure there aren't many elements of the Cuyahoga Valley we left unseen.
Brandywine Falls
Wow, right?! Brandywine Falls are the "big show" at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. I was able to get two solid angles that really show off the falls and the foliage around them.
This second image below was taken from the creek that is formed at the base of the falls. A lot of people had set up cairns here on the larger boulders dislodged from the "solid ground" forming that banks of the creek. This area was supposed to be off limits to visitors.
It took a while to make my way along the steep edge of the creek for at least a quarter mile to even get into position, I cut myself when I slipped on some moss. The humidity in the crevice was intense and fogged up my camera lenses almost immediately.
Blue Hen Falls
It's a short trail hike into the woods to find Blue Hen Falls. However, you'll need to be careful to get near the base of the falls that can be seen here. The overlook to the right of this angle is more or less the end of the officially maintained trail.
I imagine that most of these waterfalls have larger amounts of water flowing during the spring. Though the foliage won't be in full effect, so there are trade offs when you are selecting a time to visit.
My two Aunts
This is two of my aunts and me in Cuyahoga a few weeks ago. It was a nice time. We road bikes and hiked many trails that connect with the towpath.
We are in front of the Buttermilk Falls in this photo. Those first few days were all about waterfall hunting.
Looking over Tinker’s Creek Valley
We went up to the overlook by Tinker's Creek near or maybe in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Apparently this area with supposed to receive a dam to become a recreational reservoir but was popularly opposed in the 1960’s.
So, this view still exists for us to get a look at today!
Everett Covered Bridge
Everett Covered Bridge was about a 2 mile hike off the towpath. I don’t know for sure though, I'm just guessing. You could look it up. It's not that far and was totally worth the trail hike through the farmland. Here you can see the leaves were changing pretty decently.
In fact, the other picture of the creek and the changing foliage is from this same point just looking in the other direction.
Beautiful spot. I wandered through the water looking for shallow rocks to walk on to get decent photograph angles.
The Ledges
One of my favorite locations was The Ledges. Topographically, this area is an outcropping of rock that is above the surrounding field. However, because the forest in the area, it is difficult to interpret without visiting for yourself.
Bats frequent a section of crevices called “The Icebox”. This area look a lot like Endor…or maybe the Oregon coast for those of you not familiar with Star Wars. So many of the places we went were beautiful.
There were great trail ends and features all over Cuyahoga. But The Ledges have an atmospheric quality that is set apart. It can be eery at times or majestic, vast or crowded. The large exposed rock is clinically lifeless but the trees find a way to cling to the cliffs and create an ecosystem for the creatures that call it home.
All of us enjoyed this location, even the dogs. We stayed there until the sun began disappearing for the day. There was an excellent west-facing overlook. The article header image was taken at this location.
Goats at Sundown
These goats brought their owners out to The Ledges to watch the sun go down for the day.
So romantic...
Seriously though, the goats were on leashes and incredibly well-behaved. The animals were an unique addition to the crowd of humans that had been gathering with all their cameras for the sunset.
Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad
There is a train that runs along the west side of the Valley. It's a casual ride. You'll be able to see a number of the communities and features along the route.
However, if you want to actually get up close to anything in Cuyahoga, you'll need to get off the train to go hike or bike the towpath. A lot of trails extend off the old towpath that was used to guide canal boats along.
Train and Bridges of Cuyahoga
My aunts and I spent 3 hours on the train seeing the communities that are based along the canal. We rode in style via the St. Lucie Sound lounge car. Instead of the typical rows of seats, the lounge car only ha room 18 passengers to board. We received a sandwich and drink with our seats in the art deco era train car.
While the seating area offers decent views, they are quite distant compared to hiking and biking in-person. However, it is worth noting that this car also has a bar section that is currently being restored.
When it was built an artist has rendered murals in linoleum. In time, changing preferences in decor led to this mural being covered with carpet and strong adhesive to keep it in place.
As you can see, the restoration process has revealed beautiful scenes that were lost to passenger's eyes for decades. Doesn’t the girl look like Dora the Explorer?
My favorite views along the ride were the bridges. The best one in my opinion is the Brecksville—Northfield High Level Bridge. When we went by on the train I knew that I wanted to see it up close. Luckily the next day we did in fact go by that bridge on our bikes.
There’s a magnet of this bridge and area with the foliage changing. I took a picture in an attempt to replicate the view. What do you think?
Last day of the park
The day we prepared to leave the park was overcast but not too dark. We rode the towpath and hit a few landmarks as we headed generally north toward the tollroad where we would part ways and go off in opposite directions to return home.
Our last bike ride was through an area with vibrant foliage that made the forest a wash of green, yellow, orange and red. Light was catching through the leaves even though the sun was battling with the clouds that day.
Our last bit of hiking was near a ranger station with displays of flora and fauna that had been or could be found in its vicinity. Here are a few of those critters for you to get a look at too.
We took one last group selfie with the colorful leaves before giving each others hugs and saying goodbye to Cuyahoga.
Definitely recommend visiting the park because entrance is very low friction and it is cheap to enter....FREE!
Hello from Arawk City, Ohio. Would love to have an Ohio Steemit event sometime.
Excellent, I think folks from the midwest should organize and try to coordinate a little. I live near Chicago, surprised there isn't an established presence for the area.
Cool cool I will let you know if I ever here of anything in the region and/or if I organize anything in Ohio. I hope you had a good meal with family/friends recently.
Hey thanks, there are a few organic communities developing around the country but I suppose we haven't hit a level where there is a solid network yet. I feel lucky to have heard of Steemit soon after going out to a few events but I'm not sure those are available everywhere either though.
@fatkat take a look at @steemusa and #steemusa. We're setting up a USA community in hopes (at least my hopes) of one day setting up local steemit events as we get bigger. You should head on over and jump in the discord.
That was a great post @mdf-365! Those shots were right out of some fairy tale.
One suggestion I would make, got to steemitworldmap.com and add this location to their list, then come back and add the code they give you to the post. This post belongs on their map.
Thank you, I just finished it up on Thanksgiving and wanted to get it out there for my family that went there to read.
I'll definitely take a look at that site and post it up, great recommendation.
What beautiful photos! We have just enjoyed autumns colors here in Japan, but it looks as though I must say Cuyahoga has a greater variety of botany and therefore colors. I especially like the sunset pics, beautiful. If I ever make it to the US in the fall, I'll definitely consider Cuyahoga. Thank you.
Thank you very much, appreciate the feedback!
Definitely would love to get to Japan one day - I've had quite a few friends that have made the trip and I would really like to visit myself one day. Asia has so many incredible places to see.
Cuyahoga is definitely worth the visit. The National Park system in the US is quite incredible, I recommend taking a look online. I'll be posting another long read about a National Park here on Steemit in a week or so.
A nice travel report and wonderful pictures.
In autumn it is especially nice to travel because of the many colorful leaves.
I follow you :)
Thanks for following. Definitely true for Cuyahoga during my trip
Beautifully written blog! And really nice pics! Captures the autumn landscape very nicely. The train ride seems exciting! And yes she looked like Dora the explorer indeed. May be the cat can be her sidekick instead of the monkey
Thanks for taking a look. I wouldn't call the train ride exciting in the adventure sense but it was relaxing. The staff are nice and informative about the history plus the other riders can be interesting. Solid long range views of the foliage, bridges and communities though.
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What a stunning location and post!!
I am part of the Steemit Worldmap curation team and it would be great to see your post on the map. You can find out more about it on http://steemitworldmap.com. Just click on the 'code' at the bottom of the map and follow the instructions or check out the FAQ.
This is a really great travel post @mdf-365 and you've taken some really beautiful pictures. This place looks amazing!
Thank you, I've been visiting National Parks a bit over the last year or so and have a few more articles like this that I'll be writing. Getting to photograph these places has been amazing. I've gone with friends, family, and alone - I'm always lagging behind taking pics. Glad you liked it
Heya, just swinging by to let you know you're being featured in our Daily Travel Digest!
What a beautiful post you've written here, and in my opinion seriously undervalued as well! As such I'd also like to nominate you for OCD, if you accept of course!
This gem of a post was discovered by the OCD Team!
Reply to this comment if you accept, and are willing to let us share your gem of a post! By accepting this, you have a chance to receive extra rewards and one of your photos in this article may be used in our compilation post!
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If you would like your posts to be resteemed by @ocd and reach a bigger audience, use the tag #ocd-resteem, it doesn´t have to be the first one. Every day, three posts using this tag will be chosen by our curators to be RS. Good Luck!
For ure, appreciate the nomination - I just followed OCD, thought I had already actually. Definitely one of the better curation projects on here. SteemitWorlMap is awesome too. I'll definitely be using that to explore around. It was a real loss when Instagram discontinued their map tab. One of my favorite parts of the app!
Perfect, my one for today is already in so I'll nominate you tomorrow!
Glad to hear you like the map, we're still working on some things to improve it more (mostly behind the screen development stuff), but some new features might be coming up as well!
No sweat, appreciate you looking out for articles personally. Looking forward to any features you might add in.
Most of the time I nominate the most undervalued ones I've found while looking for the posts for #traveldigest, so I'd say that's the best place to find all the ones I may nominate, haha!
Wow very beautiful! I like the effects you add :)
Thank you, I'm really into the processing aspect of photography. If you want, drop a picture you've taken here in the comments and I'll process it in my style for you
Thank you a great offer! I will if I have a picture haha :P
Everyone is a photographer!
Beautiful fall pictures and thanks for explaining what each one means! I know it must have taken a while, but hopefully you'll be rewarded for your efforts. If you haven't already you should check out @steemusa and #steemusa. We're a group of steemians living or from the USA looking to grow the community here on steemit.
If you like what you see come say Hi on discord. As someone who lives in NW Indiana it's awesome to see all the people on here from the Chicago area / surrounding cities.
I will definitely check out those accounts/links. I think Steemit will begin to get a better hold in a few geographic regions over the next few months.
NW Indiana is a special area due to its relationship with Chicago and it's actual home state. Do you have a link to any particular recommended discord channels?
Hello friend. I really like the road photo of yours
Ah, yeah the bike trails were great there
Wow great post and so much information! Thanks for sharing @mdf-365🙂
thanks for resteeming this article to your followers