Cuyahoga Valley National Park
We left our hotel in Streetsboro OH around 9:00 AM. This allowed for Adam to have breakfast, a diaper change and some tummy-time before our day started. We then drove to Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It was only about a 20-minute drive from where we stayed. Cuyahoga Valley is a free national park, which was a nice surprise we got when entering. We first went to the Boston Store, which is the visitor’s centre. There we watched an 18-minute video about the history of the national park. We also were given a lot of information about the trails from the park ranger, which allowed us to plan our day.
We decided to start our day with the more strenuous hiking, so we hiked the Ledges Trail, followed by the Haskell Run Trail. The Ledges Trail is 2.2 miles with 105ft elevation. The views along this trail were beautiful! The early part of the trail is stroller-friendly, but the core of the trail definitely requires a carrier.
We started off at the ledges shelter, where we parked, in the centre of the loop. Due to poor signage, we entered the loop using a different trail (there are lots of offshoots which allow you to leave the loop and get back to the central parking lot. We entered the loop just south of the Ice Box Cave, and went south on the trail. The first stop we hit was the Overlook.
Here we stopped to feed and burp Adam. Adam decided to cluster feed this hike, so we had to stop every 45 minutes to an hour to feed him to keep him content – there were a few benches along the way, but for the most part we sat on the rocks. After the Overlook, the scenery of the hike changes to beautiful rock formations. There are areas just off of the trail which we explored. There are lots of warning that rock climbing is prohibited, so we didn’t climb the rocks, but we just ventured around off trail a little.
Before the end of the trail, there is the option to add on to your hike using the Haskell Run Trail. This 0.5 mile loop trail wasn’t anything special. It’s good if you just want to add more time to your hike, but next time we would skip this and spend more time elsewhere. Halfway through the trail, you end up at the Happy Days Lodge and, after getting a little lost, we found the remainder of the loop across a field to the left of the lodge.
Lastly, back on the Ledges Trail, we passed by the Ice Box Cave, which is a cave filled with bats. The cave, however, is now closed to protect the bats from the spread of white-noise disease. There are still places to explore around the cave, but the entrance is closed off.
After the hike we drove 10 minutes to Brandywine Falls for a BBQ picnic lunch. Unlike other national parks we’ve been to, driving from place to place involves driving through actual towns. The parking lot is right near the picnic tables, but there are only 4 tables, so we had to wait a few minutes before we could start.
After lunch, we decided to keep Adam in the stroller (we had put him in the bassinet for lunch so he wouldn’t be strapped in) and walk along the boardwalk to get a view of the Brandywine falls, this board walk is the only accessible portion of the Brandywine Gorge Trail.
After about 15 minutes, we returned the stroller to the car and put Adam in the carrier and completed the Brandywine Gorge Trail, which starts on the same path as the Stanford Trail. This is a 1.5 mile loop trail and moderately strenuous. There are points along the trail where you can walk out into the river, slightly downstream from the waterfall. Towards the end of the trail there is a great view from the top of the falls, along with some ruins of an old town that used generate electricity from the falls, until lightning destroyed it over a hundred years ago. You then meet up with part of the boardwalk (not the accessible portion, as there are several flights of steep stairs), and there are a couple of vista points to look at the waterfall. This waterfall, as the park ranger boasted, is the tallest waterfall in northern Ohio. It wasn’t the most impressive waterfall, but it was still very pretty.
Finally, we headed to Blue Hen Falls. The parking lot right next to the trail only has about 3 spots, we were lucky enough to get one of them, but there was an overflow lot nearby. The hike to the falls is quite short, less than 0.5 miles each way, but the trail has an incline. Once we got to the end of the trail, we climbed down to reach the waterfall. This was not part of the official trail, but it was relatively easy to get up and down. We could’ve spent a lot more time here, but it was reaching 4PM and we heard some thunder so we wanted to get on the road.
We quickly changed Adam on top of the car trunk as there was no good place to change him, and we headed home. It took 7 hours to get home due to long-weekend traffic and a 30- to 45-minute detour to Target. One of us sat in the back seat with Adam the entire way as he was not feeling very cooperative for the ride home, but was calm if we were entertaining him.
​
Overall, we had a great trip to Cuyahoga Valley. We saw the highlights in our one day there, but there is a ton more to do if your kids are old enough to bike. If you want to do a simple trip with some hiking and lots of great nature (and are relatively close to Cleveland), we would definitely recommend spending at least a day here.