Hiking Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Laura and I will be hiking in Cuyahoga Valley National Park tomorrow. This is the closest park to my home in Marion, and although it's one of my least favorite, I'm still glad it was preserved. If you look at it from above, you'll see that it was the last remaining woodlands in the area and was nearly wiped out by development.

I will be talking to the park rangers about my Grand Canyon Petition. This won't be the main focus of the trip, which is more of a day trip so Laura and I can go hiking and mark our second National Park in our passports. However, if it hadn't been developed as much as it was, Ohio would've been a beautiful state. So perhaps it's fitting that I visit Cuyahoga Valley National Park while fighting to keep the Confluence area of the Grand Canyon preserved. I mean, by the time we preserved the Grand Canyon as a national park, there was a Navajo reservation on the eastern edge of it to protect that part from private hands, and the rest of the country was still developing westward. The canyon was grabbed before the great westward push was completed. It's sad that now the Navajo Nation is trying to develop the part of it that borders their land, especially when so many are against it. I mean, if you look at Savetheconfluence.com, you'll see many in the Native American community who are against the proposed developments in the Confluence Area of the Grand Canyon.



But being in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, where the development nearly wiped it out, will likely strengthen my resolve to keep fighting for the Canyon. I mean, look at it. There aren't many places in Ohio left where you can go to walk through a meadow as it used to be. There aren't many places in Ohio where you can see Bald Eagles nesting. A freeway, a golf course, and a concert amphitheater are all within the park's borders, which mar the potential this area would've had if it had been set aside earlier. But if not for those who wanted to preserve it, we wouldn't even have this park in my back yard.


Anyway, my personal mission aside, I'm looking forward to this trip. It'll be great to get out and spend a day hiking with Laura, and it'll be great to cross our second park together off our list. I remember after I proposed to Laura, and we had walked up to Clingman's Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we sat in the car and looked at the maps of all the parks in the country we got from the visitors center. I was thrilled that she seemed excited to be crossing parks off our list together. We sat there in the car, our passports stamped from our first joint park visit, and talked about which parks we'd like to visit. It's a memory I cherish, and I cherish the ability to make these new memories with Laura at the parks!

So I'll be posting pics and reporting back. Stay tuned.