Hiking and Biking in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio
June 30 - July 3
Cuyahoga National Park
Streetsboro, Ohio
“Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.” Psalm 46:10
If our two-night stay in the Finger Lakes sounded jam-packed, our three night stay in Ohio was notably more chill. After two previous months of nonstop everything, chill is exactly what we needed.
Aside from being a 4-5 hour drive from our last stop (our target driving distance), the main attraction for us in Ohio was Cuyahoga Valley National Park, a smaller, woodsy park surrounded by suburbs.
Our first stop at national parks is almost always a visitors center so the kids can earn their Junior Ranger badges. Since we first learned about the program at Muir Woods in 2021, Sadie and Nate have earned over two dozen of these. To earn a badge, kids usually have to complete age-appropriate pages of a workbook. Some badges require doing a hike or attending a ranger program. Upon completion, kids are sworn in as Junior Rangers, promising to protect and preserve the park, and receive a badge with the park’s name and graphic. Their badges are proudly displayed on cork boards in our RV living room.
What I personally love about the program is that we all learn a little about each park’s history, nature, and environmental challenges. We also meet the park rangers, who are local experts, especially about unique things to see in the park.
At this visitor center, we learned that the extensive industrial pollution of the Cuyahoga River led to the river catching on fire, multiple times, due to the amount of oil on its surface. In 1969, a major river fire in Cleveland gained national attention and ultimately sparked the country’s first Clean Water Act in 1972, giving the EPA authority to prevent the dumping of contaminants into navigable waterways.
After Sadie and Nate picked up their packets, we did a short, signature hike to see Brandywine Falls.
Brandywine Falls in Cuyahoga Valley National Park
Then we ran errands and returned to the trailer for down time and dinner.
The next day we returned to the park with mountain bikes to tackle the 5-mile Lamb Loop, a hilly, well maintained mountain biking trail on the side of a ravine.
Glad I took this while all were still smiling :)
It was here that the kids learned that their many hours of riding at Virginia Beach’s Marshview Park did little to prepare them for actual hills. There were a few falls (all good) and a few tears shed (not from falling), but we powered through and made it back to the truck unscathed. Smoked after the ride, we refueled with burgers and shakes at a popular lunch spot.
Memories of Ohio
The other draw to this area for me was returning to a place I’d lived before. When I was six, my dad’s job relocated our family from Houston, Texas to Wooster, Ohio, a small college town about an hour south of Cleveland. We only lived there for 15 months, but it was a very memorable year for our family because of how different Ohio was from Texas and Florida.
That year (circa 1989) in early May, our family showed up in Ohio in shorts and T-shirts. My mom recalls how ill-prepared we were when it snowed on Mother’s Day.
Our home on Christmas Run Drive backed up to a beautiful forest, which had trails around several small lakes. The scenery and the pace were notably different than big-city Houston, with lots of time at friends’ houses, playing outside after school, and going for long walks after dinner through the trees to the lakes.
During the planning stages of our road trip, I initially thought we’d spend one day in Cuyahoga National Park and one day taking the family to Wooster to show them where I lived. But once we got our bearings in the area, I realized there was more I wanted to do in the park and not very much that would justify the hour and 15-minute drive each way to Wooster. We could pass by my old house, my old school, and our favorite park. But beyond that, I didn’t know anyone there anymore. And my favorite part of the town—the forest and lakes in our backyard—have been developed into a private subdivision.
Instead, we spent our time hiking and mountain biking at Cuyahoga, enjoying the pool at the KOA, and catching up on laundry, email, and errands (a bunch of life admin and some repairs were still following us down the road). I may have done Target pickup orders three days in a row since there was one down the street from the campground.
While we didn’t make it to Wooster, the mix of buckeye and fir trees, roadside wildflowers, the scurrying of chipmunks, and the winter rye grass filling lawns of tidy hillside houses all brought back long-buried memories from of my first-grade year an hour from there. It reminded me of what an adventure it is to experience new places and how our family’s moving around during my elementary years instilled a love of exploring and meeting new people that made me well suited for Navy life. It is a love that I am happy to pass along to Sadie and Nate.
The kids have been adjusting to RV life, and I really like how Nate put it:
“I love our new house. No matter what state we go to, we’re still in the same house.”
Adding the Ohio sticker to the map. The filled-in states are from our RV adventures since December 2020.
Leaving Ohio to drive to Michigan, I felt a shift—an intentional turn toward a slower pace. Because as much as this trip is about experiencing meaningful places, it is also about slowing down, settling in, and enjoying the ride—a ride we are very happy to be on.
Hi from the back seat
For those just finding us, hello! Inspired by the Year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25, our family is embarking on a yearlong RV road trip in 2025 to celebrate my husband’s retirement from 20 years in Naval Special Warfare. We hope to reset and reflect before civilian life begins.
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