The Richard and Lucile Durrell Edge of Appalachia Preserve is situated 75 miles south of Cincinnati. The preserve system is managed jointly by the Museum of Cincinnati and the Nature Conservancy. Together its eleven different properties preserve some 16,000 acres of the western edge of the Appalachian Escarpment. Currently four of these properties feature hiking trails. We previously described the Joan Jones Portman Trail. Today we'll describe a hike we took mid-July on the Lynx Prairie Trail.
There Read more ➜ Edge of Appalachia: Lynx Prairie Trail
The Richard and Lucile Durrell Edge of Appalachia Preserve is situated 75 miles south of Cincinnati. The preserve system is managed jointly by the Museum of Cincinnati and the Nature Conservancy. Together its eleven different properties preserve some 16,000 acres of the western edge of the Appalachian Escarpment. Currently four of these properties feature hiking trails. We previously described the Joan Jones Portman Trail. Today we'll describe a hike we took mid-July on the Lynx Prairie Trail.
There Read more ➜ 
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. 
Between eight and four thousand years ago what later became Ohio experienced a prolonged drought. This allowed the drought-tolerant plants of the Great Plains to displace Ohio's more typical, water-loving plants. This eastward thrust of the prairie into Ohio has been referred to as a "prairie peninsula." The prairie peninsula encompassed nearly 400 square miles of the Darby Plains in western, central Ohio. Today only 1% of this prairie survives. There are a number of MetroParks in the Columbus and 
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. 
Deep Lock Quarry is part of the Summit County Metro Park system. The park has several historical features of interest: a canal lock, a sandstone quarry, and millstones that were created from the quarried sandstone. Hikers at Deep Lock Quarry can take advantage of two trails in the 73-acre park: the Quarry Trail and the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail (henceforth referred to as the "Towpath Trail"). Both the Cuyahoga Trail and the Buckeye Trail overlap the Towpath Trail and continue beyond the 
Previously our posts have focused entirely on hiking destinations within Ohio, but like a lot of our fellow hikers, we also go hiking in the states that share a border with Ohio. In this post we discuss a trip just beyond Ohio's southeast border to West Virginia. After crossing the Ohio River into West Virginia, we headed toward Seneca Rocks located in the Monongahela National Forest. The site is a rock climber's paradise with a variety of climbing routes available. Not being climbers ourselves, 
Chaparral Prairie is a 67-acres state nature preserve with a three-quarter mile loop trail. Located in Adams County, it preserves a rare prairie habitat. Prairies are defined by the type of vegetation that grows in them. In general these plants are drought-tolerant, fire-tolerant and shade-intolerant. They originated in America's Great Plains and moved eastward thousands of years ago during a centuries-long drought when this area was warmer than now. However as the climate cooled and normal rain