TrekOhio on Facebook
Earlier this week Bob published an article on Lake Hope that I really liked... and I wasn't the only one. In the past few days this one article has been liked 119 times on Facebook. For us, that's a lot of likes. No other article that we've published has even come close to that number. Admittedly I'm biased, but I think Bob has published a number of similarly, well-written articles. So it's possible that it's just a matter of making it easier for people on Facebook to follow our blog.
Although Read more ➜
Squirrels and chipmunks both stockpile acorns, but it matters whether the acorns fell from a white oak or a red oak. The acorns dropped by white oaks sprout soon after landing on the ground, but the acorns of the red oak lie dormant all winter and sprout in the spring. Since the sprout consumes the energy that was stored in the acorn, rapid sprouting makes the acorns of the white oak a poor choice for stockpiling. So squirrels and chipmunks typically eat the acorns produced by white oak as soon as 
Lake Hope State is a great place to get away from the crowds and enjoy peace and quiet is a scenic natural setting. Lake Hope is located in Vinton County just southeast of the Hocking Hills. In the 19th century it was a major iron producing and processing region at the heart of the American industrial revolution. Today many of the towns centered around the mines and iron furnaces are gone. It is a sparsely populated region of Ohio with an economy based on agriculture, forestry, and tourism.
The 
Lancaster, Ohio has a population just under 39,000, and it is the county seat of Fairfield County. It has a municipal park known as "Rising Park." The park offers the normal sort of amenities that you might expect: a pond, picnic tables, playgrounds... things of that nature. But what's unusual about the park is its terrain. Rising 250-foot (76 m) above the surrounding plain is a bluff known as "Mount Pleasant." The bluff is made of highly erosion-resistant Blackhand sandstone. From the top of Mount 
We'd visited every (non-permit) park and preserve in Hocking county except one - Kessler Swamp. This weekend on the way home from a hike at Conkles Hollow, we stopped there. The parking lot for the preserve in a pull-off off of Hideaway Hills Road. A very short path leads you to an observation platform overlooking the swamp.
The preserve is a 20-acre site consisting mostly of the swamp which is fed by Durbin Run, a tributary of Rush Creek. When we visited we noted mostly waterfowl 
Last weekend's sunny, warm weather encouraged us to go for a hike around the Rim Trail at Conkle's Hollow. I just wanted to share a few photos, so you could see how beautiful this area is.
Panoramic exploration
This is such a beautiful trail. I took several panoramic photos, but there's always the question as to how to present such long, skinny photos at a blog. So I'm trying something new. I made a one-minute video were I am basically just panning 
Four years ago we participated in our first winter hike - 6 miles from Old Man's Cave to Ash Cave with a small group of approximately 5,500 people. There was snow and ice on the ground and the temperature was just below freezing. It was awesome! We've been hooked on winter hiking ever since.
Why go on a winter hike? Isn't it cold and nasty? What about slipping on the snow and ice? Before I started winter hiking, I had all of those concerns. In fact, I thought the idea sounded a little 
Now that it's November, the wildflower season has come to a close. But let's take a last look at those hardy wildflowers that saw the season out.
And now for one that I didn't see...
A rare and beautiful October wildflower is the Fringed Gentian. In Last call for fen flora, Jim McCormac tells of his trip to Betsch Fen to see these beautiful flowers. Apparently his quest involved wading through a creek and traveling through a woods that was without