Native Cactus in Adams County
We recently made a couple of trips to Adams County. We've written about a few of the sites we visited and will discuss many more in the future. On our trip we briefly stopped at Sandy Springs Cemetery near the Ohio River to view native Ohio cactus.
Regular readers of TrekOhio will recall that we previously wrote about cactus at Kitty Todd Nature Preserve near Toledo. Cactus are also found in Adams County. I was about to write an article about the Adams County native cactus when I read Kyle Brooks Read more ➜
Last weekend after hiking at Wildcat Hollow, we drove over to have a look at Monroe Outlook. Monroe Outlook is a scenic overlook providing a large hill-top panoramic view of the area. The site was developed by Wayne National Forest, Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources, Little Cities of the Forest Collaboration, and Miller High School.
The parking area is a small gravel parking lot with an informational kiosk off of Irish Ridge Road. Its about a 5 minute drive from the Wildcat Hollow trail-head. 
Have you enjoyed the thrill of standing in a high place surveying the landscape far below? It's a bit of a challenge to find such places in a natural setting in Ohio, but not impossible. Below is a list of scenic overlooks or vistas that Deb and I have enjoyed along with links to their location and some notes.
Its not possible to simply look at a topographic map and find good scenic overlooks. As Ohio doesn't have mountains, a hilltop may potentially offer a vista but be so heavily forested 
The Edge of Appalachia is a 16,000 acre preserve system in Adams County that's jointly run by the Cincinnati Museum Center and the Nature Conservancy. There are four trails in the preserve that are open the public. The Portman Trail is a great starting pointing for exploring this majestic landscape.
Many visitors to the Edge of Appalachia preserve mistakenly believe that the Eulett Center is a visitor center. However, the Eulett Center is an office complex for researchers and educators. 
We visited the 1,900 acre Englewood Metropark in the Dayton area during the summer to hike and view three small waterfalls. Englewood is located just northwest of Dayton near Dayton Airport. It is part of Montgomery County's Five Rivers MetroParks. The park is named for the Englewood dam on the Stillwater River which flows through the park. The lake created by the dam is known as the Englewood Recreation Reservoirm.
Englewood offers a variety of recreational activities including fishing, 
We are going to describe one of our favorite loop trails in the Hocking Hills State Park. The outbound portion of the the trail follows the Grandma Gatewood Trail, named after the famed Emma Gatewood. The Grandma Gatewood Trail is a segment of the 1,500 mile Buckeye Trail and is marked with blue blazes or blue marker posts.
Below is a screenshot of the GPS trace of our hike courtesy of Google's My Tracks app. We started at the red marker near the Upper Falls and traveled counter-clockwise. 
Just prior to our birding trip to Magee Marsh in May, we visited two waterfalls in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We stopped at Brandywine Falls - one of the finest waterfalls in the state of Ohio.
Brandywine Falls
The falls is located on Brandywine Creek where it flows over a 65-foot (19.8m) sandstone and shale cliff. For information on the falls history, facilities, and travel directions, please see our prior article.
Blue Hen Falls
After a quick stop at 
Beaver Marsh is located in Cuyahoga Valley National Park near the Cuyahoga River. Years ago it used to be a junkyard with a small stream flowing through it. A local group cleaned up the junkyard in the mid '80's and then some beavers dammed the stream creating the marsh.
The marsh is on a bike / hike towpath through Cuyahoga Valley National Park that extends 110 miles from Cleveland to Akron and beyond. At the marsh, the gravel towpath changes to a boardwalk with small observation 
In April we drove to Caesar Creek State Park to visit a new pedestrian suspension bridge and two waterfalls. Our hikes consisted of two segments on the southern portion of the Perimeter Loop Trail. The yellow-blazed Perimeter Loop Trail is an 11.5 mile loop trail on either side of Caesar Creek Lake. The northern and southern routes are connected by a bridge on one end and Caesar Creek Dam on the other.
Our first hike started at the Flat Fork Ridge Recreation Area located on Clarksville