Hiking the Parks & Preserves of Ohio
I struck gold in central Ohio! Although many trees have completely dropped their leaves, there are still large swaths of forest that are decked out in yellow. I stopped by two parks this week. On Thursday I visited the Sharon Woods Metro Park (part of the Columbus/Franklin County Metro Park system), and on Saturday I went for a walk in Char-Mar Ridge (part of Delaware County’s Preservation Park System).
Although Ohio has a number of tick species, the species which carries Lyme disease has been relatively absent from our state… until now. The Lyme-carrying tick is the Black Legged Tick, also known as the Deer Tick (Ixodes scapularis). There are now established populations of Black Legged Ticks in 26 Ohio counties including Franklin and Delaware counties in Central Ohio. Most of the affected counties are east of Interstate 71 (see the link to the Toledo Blade at the end of this post for a map of their distribution in Ohio). Since this species of tick has a two-year reproductive cycle, health officials fear that we will be hit hard in 2014.
This viral video has already had more than 1.6 million views. 
But it is amusing, so in case you missed it I’ve embedded in below.
Direct link to video: http://youtu.be/CI8UPHMzZm8.
This weekend we went to two sites to take in the fall color: Airplane Rock in the Hocking State Forest and Christmas Rocks State Nature Preserve in Fairfield County. The trees in Hocking State Forest were just starting to turn colors, so we felt that we were there a little too early to see the colors at their peak. We were also surprised that there was a crowd of people at Airplane Rock. In contrast Christmas Rocks is a bit farther north, and it was definitely more colorful. In addition Bob and I had the cliff on the Jacob’s Ladder trail to ourselves because nobody knows about it. I’m guessing that both of these sites will be even more colorful in another week.
And with that, let’s look at some photos.
Previously I’ve discussed Louis Bromfield’s home at Malabar Farm, the Bacall/Bogart wedding that was held there, and the beautiful fall foliage. Today I’d like to address the farm itself. While facing the big barn with the mural, you’ll note a small sign pointing toward a downward ramp to the left. If you go down this ramp, you can check out the farm animals like the attractive rooster above. Below are a few more animals in and around the barn.
A huge rock hurtles through the empty void of space. Its been orbiting the sun for hundreds of millions of years. But this orbit will be different. This time its trajectory and the orbit of earth intersect. It will impact somewhere in southern Ohio releasing energy equivalent to a large thermonuclear weapon and creating a crater five miles across. Alert the governor, start evacuations! But wait, it’s already too late!
It was sunny, cool day today… perfect weather for seeing the fall colors! We visited two state parks in northeast Ohio: Mohican and Malabar Farm. At Mohican we climbed the very tall fire tower, visited the Gorge Overlook and drove to Pleasant Hill Dam. I think that the Pleasant Hill Dam was my favorite spot at Mohican. The biggest problem with the Gorge Overlook is that there are a lot of conifer trees on the opposite side of the gorge, so it’s not as colorful as some other spots.
There’s a crab spider lurking in the cluster of flowers pictured above. Crab spiders pretend to be part of a flower, and when an unsuspecting insect arrives to sample the flower’s nectar, he’ll pounce on it and have it for lunch. If you’ve spotted him (or given up trying), click the “Continue reading” link to see him plainly.
Below are a couple of dozen wildflowers that I photographed last month. I have numbered all the photos, so you can refer to the flower’s number if you want to talk about a specific one. I haven’t been able to identify all of them, so if you see one that you recognize please leave me a comment. Oh, and if you think I’ve misidentified any, I’d love to hear from you.
Here’s several photos from the area around Boch Hollow. They were taken September 29th, 2012.
