Hiking at John Bryan State Park

Did a 3 mile hike at John Bryan State Park along the river on the Gorge Trails.  It was a great way to unwind after the 8 hour class today.  I love Daylight Savings Time!

Nope… I haven’t forgetten about this blog

While we had a couple of nice hikes over Thanksgiving (Caesar Creek SP and East Fork SP) as well as a mountain bike ride at East Fork SP on the easy trail, which I failed to record, most of our activities have moved indoors and resulted in a multitude of entries in our Quest for Fitness blog, which has entered it’s 2nd year.  Staying physically active, whether its cycling, hiking, Olympic Weightlifting or other, has been our most significant focus.

On January 23rd, we had a fortuitous break in the weather for January…. 50F and even a spot or two of sunshine…. so I threw the bike hitch back on and we loaded up to go over and ride on the Little Miami Trail.

Cycled 15 miles, 1:15, average pace was quite low, but leisurely.

Nice gentle ride… just out enjoying the wind in our face and the fresh sights after doing exercise indoors for the past few months.. even saw a deer and couple of small ani-mules.  There were over 20 cyclist out on the trail and road taking advantage of a rare January day suitable for riding.

Just as quickly as the nice weather appeared, it disappeared, and we’ve been mired in below freezing temps for the past week.  I’m glad I had the foresight to take the bike hitch back off the Jeep while it was still warm.

Biking and Hiking

Today we started our ride at Morgan’s Canoe Livery and headed north toward Corwin.  We’d gotten a later start than we’d hoped, so we had to keep the ride short because we had planned a hike with Penny’s daughter when she got off work.

As a variation on biking the Little Miami Trail, we got off on the road and went across the Corwin Nixon covered bridge on Oregonia Rd.  As we stopped there to get a picture, several cyclists went by, so we wanted to see what road they were using.  Heading down Oregonia, we climbed the light hill and zoomed back down the other side, only to have the road end at Rt 42 near Wayneville.  Since the highway is 4 lane there, we stayed on the wide shoulder and headed up to Waynesville, then crossed over to Corwin for lunch at the Corwin Peddler, before heading back to the Ft Ancient area via the Little Miami Trail.

After Jess got off work, we headed over to Caesar’s Creek Reservoir for some hiking.  We started out near the boat ramp, but the trail we’d done before was heavily overgrown with a lot of poison ivy.  After a 1/2 mile of that we reconsidered the wisdom of this venture and tried another trail.  The second trail didn’t go far either, but had some good elevation gain/decline.  Finally, we went over to the mountain bike trails.  They had just finished a race on the trails, so they were well used with little vegetation on the sides encroaching.  We hiking around about half of the “red” trail and a “connector”, only encountering a couple of mountain bikes.

It was a great day to be outside!  We biked 20 miles on the Surly Long Haul Truckers with one pannier each,  and did about 5 miles of hiking.

5 Miles of Hiking on a Rainy Day… woohoo!

Yesterday we biked past a small nature preserve called Halls Creek Wood Preserve. It looked like it had some hiking, so we’d been talking about checking it out. Just as we were heading out of the door at home, the rain started coming down. The weather had called for scattered thunderstorms, but instead, we got a constant rainy drizzle…. very Seattle-like. 🙂 This didn’t bother us at all, ’cause it seems like any time we go for a long bike ride or such, we get rained on and it’s all good!

Today, Penny’s daughter decided to go out with us, so we were glad to see the rain didn’t deter her!

Halls Creek Woods is about 274 acres of mature trees, steep climbs out of the ravine, with a nice plateau with more hiking… all told, about 2 miles of dirt hiking trails.  In addition, we decided to walk up the creek bed for about a half mile, enjoying the slate rock and bedding planes.  It was a great place for hiking, and a good place to practice hiking up and down steep inclines!!

After that, we drove over near Ft Ancient so that we could hike the Little Miami Trail from the canoe livery up to the Jeremiah Morrow Bridge that carries Interstate 71 over the Little Miami River.  This is the highest Interstate to River bridge height in Ohio.

The reason we did this hike was for Penny’s daughter.  Penny and her had driven across the river valley using the bridge.  It’s a spectacular view of the valley, but Penny commented that we bike under the bridge down on the trail.

There’s a parking lot managed by the Ohio Dept of Natural Resources that is just next to the canoe livery, and a short walk to the trail.  Round trip, it was 2 1/4 miles down and back on the paved trail.  Surprisingly, because of the rain, there were very few cyclists out on the trail, so we pretty much had it to ourselves.

All told, it was over 5 miles of hiking on both dirt and paved trails, as well as rocky creek bed…. a nice way to spend the afternoon!

Fay Bainbridge SP, Next Step Conditioning, and Cove 2 Diving

Tuesday, we decided to take a day trip over to Bainbridge Island via the land route around the west side of Puget Sound.  Our motivation for the drive was to find Coach Izzy at Next Step Conditioning.  We knew him from Scubaboard and Facebook and knew that since we were this close we needed to stop in and see him.  In addition to his website, he also has a blog we like to follow!

When we got to Bainbridge Island, we had trouble finding Next Step Conditioning.  More accurately, we had trouble believing the GPS because the driveway led back into the woods, we thought, to someone’s home, we disregarded it and drove down to Fay Bainbridge State Park to visit there, take some pics, and look up the address to Next Step again.

At Fay Bainbridge State Park, we got some shots of the picturesque driftwood all over the beach.

Afterwards, we circled back around and looked for Next Step again.  This time we opted to drive up the driveway…. way back up the driveway.  It was very cool back in there with a few residences, as well as the Next Step building.  We poked around trying to find our way in, and Coach Izzy stuck his head out window and asked if he could help us, then suddenly exclaimed… PENNY… BOB!!! Well… I guess we were in the right place!!

Coach knew that I’d talked about a sore problematic shoulder, so he volunteered to take a look at it and worked me over pretty good.

He worked me over and left me bruised, but much of the previous strain was relieved!  Thanks Coach!  Before we left, we scheduled a return visit to work out with Izzy on Saturday.

We took the ferry from Bainbridge Island back to downtown Seattle, so that we could get back to Bob’s in time to prep for the evening dive.  The ferry was a cool experience and dumped us right downtown.  If someone lived over on the Island, this would be a great way to get back and forth to work without driving around Puget Sound!  In fact, just park on the island and walk around or use public transportation once you reach Seattle.

In the evening after Bob got off work, we headed over to Cove 2 and met up with Colleen, as well as Marc.  Colleen and I weren’t up to diving, so Penny, Marc, and Bob took a tour of the Cove, much to Penny’s delight.  Colleen and I shared coffee and many stories!

Penny, Marc, Bob

You can see in the pic one of the people ferry’s that shuttles back and forth between West Seattle and Downtown Seattle.

Another Great Day!!

Redondo Beach Diving & a Brief Visit to Snoqualmie Falls

We stayed at Bob Bailey’s house in Federal Way, about 1/2 way between Seattle and Tacoma.  His place is known as “Hotel Bob” because of his hospitality toward visiting divers.  Bob is reknowned on many of the scuba forums, and goes by Grateful Diver or NWGratefulDiver.  With over 2000 dives in the Puget Sound area, he is a great guide and source of information for the area!  Visit the link to his website to see the cool things in the PNW!!

On Monday, Bob took us a couple of miles from his place to one of the dives he does the most… Redondo!

Redondo is an easy beach entry, even at low tide.  Here’s a shot looking back toward shore from the end of the public pier.

Bob Bailey

Penny &  Colleen

After the dives, Bob had to run to a dive class he was taking, so Colleen navigated us over to the North Bend Ski area.

This was a beautiful area for driving around, just 30 or so miles east of Seattle.  We got out and did some walking around, marveling that there was still snow on the ground in places that kept a couple of roads closed that we wanted to try.

On our way back to the Seattle area, it started to rain, but Colleen thought we might like the Snoqualmie Falls area.  WOW!! Was she ever right!  Beautiful falls!!

Penny and Colleen on the observation deck at the Falls

So many diverse things to do made for some full days!!

Buckeye Trail – Oakwood to Defiance

The Buckeye Trail around the state of Ohio crosses through Oakwood, a small town in NW Ohio.

I decided to follow the trail up to Defiance. Along the way, I started to see the famous “blue blazes”.

One of the cool things that I quickly came up on was a lock with an intact prism along side of road T-163.

After collecting a few shots, I continued on up to the community called “Junction”.  This is where the Wabash-Erie Canal joined up with the Miami-Erie canal and then proceeded on up to Defiance, then further to Lake Erie.

It was cool to observe these remnants of history, that formed the transportation corridors through Ohio just prior to the railroad age.  Many of the artifacts are now gone, as are the towns and villages that once blossomed next to these transportation hubs.  This none more apparent than the village of Junction, Ohio, said to have once rivaled Ft Wayne in size and growth in the 1800’s, but now nothing more than a collection of homes, trailers, and debris.

Rappelling and Rope Climbing

Saturday, we met a friend of ours, Dave Berman, near Conkle’s Hollow, in Hocking Hills, Ohio, for day of rappelling and rope climbing.  It had been since last June that we had rappelled with Dave, and we were looking forward to it.

I realize it wasn’t nearly as humid as last year, but the hike up to the top of the plateau was nearly as bad as I remembered it to be.  Last year I was winded and worn out just getting up on top.  This year, the hiking pace was faster, so we were still breathing fast, but the recovery was much much quicker… I attribute that to the CrossFit workouts we’ve been doing for the past month or so at the gym. (My workouts since early January are chronicled in a separate blog “Quest for Fitness“).

Once we got to site, Dave started setting up the ropes.

After Penny took a rappel down, I went over the cliff.

One of the things that we tried this year was rope climbing with a North American style “ascender” system.  This was fun to get a feel for how the components of this particular system worked.  I felt like I had danglies all over me though.  We also got to watch Sarah using more of a European-style ascender to practice going up and down with.

Here’s our new friend Sarah as she descends over the top.

Here’s Penny getting instruction from Dave on how to climb the rope and feed it smoothly through the ascenders.

I got my turn at ascending too and had a great time doing it!

This was a great day!  Hiking, rappelling, and ascending rope…. and we’re looking forward to more of the same!  Hopefully we can synch our schedule with Dave’s a bit more this year!

This is the kind of beauty and nature that’s hard to enjoy just sitting on a couch!

There’s a some more pics from the day in our Facebook album.

Ohio River Trail: Final Funding Drive

Ohio River Trail

The “Ohio River Way” is seeking final funding/donations for the portion of the Ohio River Trail to complete the segment between the Little Miami Trail and downtown Cincinnati.  They have identified $12 million in funds, but require private sector support for the final $4 million.

Every bit helps, so I donated.  Will you?

Friends of Little Miami State Park Trail

The Little Miami State Park is unique as far as State Parks go.  It is a linear park that is 60 feet wide by approx. 60 miles long.  This presents opportunities for maintenance coverage, and even funding.  Most State Parks can gather additional funding for projects and such via camping fees and concessions.  LMSP has none of these, so is limited to the state funding it receives.  This, among other challenges like bridge repair, are why a vision for a friends group modeled after what some other state parks have was conceived.

Last night was the kick-off meeting for the new Friends of “Little Miami State Park Trail” group.  The turn-out was incredible, drawing people from many walks (and rides) of life, including former Governor Bob Taft.

The primary agenda was to inform everyone of Simeon’s thoughts on what the group should be focused on, and then elect an interim Officer core to get the ball rolling.  This would enable the group to start writing by-laws and apply for 503-c status.

Simeon didn’t lobby for the position, but with all the leg work he’s vested in this kick-off, he was unanimously elected as President. Even when there was more than one person interested in a position, compromises and graciousness were very apparent with the group.  The first steps of this group are off to a very promising start.  I wrote down some areas where Penny and I would be willing to help out, and I’m looking forward to working with a group that has such a great “can-do” attitude!

Simeon started an information page on his Corwin Peddler site.
http://www.thecorwinpeddler.com/Friends_of_the_LMSP.php

I also created a Facebook Group for the Friends of Little Miami State Park Trail.
(I’ll turn this over to a webmaster or group IT rep when they desire, or help maintain this page myself).