Cuyahoga Valley National Park- Part 1

Ever since my brother moved to Ohio- a little over a year now- he´s been saying that we should go to Cuyahoga Valley National Park. I´ve always responded vaguely in the affirmative. Sure, it would be nice to go to the park. That´s all I ever said about it. Last month, my brother, sensing, perhaps my unwillingness to pursue doing anything about visiting the park, suggested that we go to CNP in October. The rubber was meeting the road! I told my brother that it was fine, yes, we should go to CVNP.

The park is near Cleveland and as such it´s about 3 1/2 hours from our house. It´s closer to my brother´s place in northern Ohio. We decided to meet at one of the park´s entrances. We´d spend the night in the area, hike a different part of the park the next day and part ways. That was the plan and it worked out really well. The week we decided to go (it was dictated primarily by my brother´s work schedule) ended up being a really busy one- I had a sub job the day after I got home, Alyssa was coming home for fall break the day after I got home, Donnie needed me to get him some items for his work the day after I got home, I had committed to making some goodies for a Halloween party we were attending over the weekend and wanted to get a head start ideally the day after I got home (that did not happen but I did have some wiggle room). So yeah, just a busy time but if you wait for the perfect time to do something, it may never happen! 

Once we decided we were going, I started doing some research on where to go within the park and also I wanted to know some basic information about the park. I found out a lot about the park and want to share some of it here as it´s pretty interesting and/or if you´re going to be in the area and are thinking about going to it.

    * CVNP is Ohio´s only national park. Here´s where things take an interesting turn: when I read reviews about the park, many people who´ve been to multiple national parks remarked that they thought the grounds/terrain/hikes were more suited to be a state park, not a national park. I don´t know exactly what makes a park national park worthy though I suppose it has to do with stunning scenery as opposed to just pretty areas? I don´t know. My guess is that the designation to make it a national park was a political one (most things boil down to politics!). I initially bristled when I read reviews about people sort of trash talking the national parkness of it? However, I will say after visiting it (granted we saw a tiny portion of it), I can sort of see the, ¨this should be a state park¨ argument. The parts we saw were very pretty and as I said before, I don´t know what all exactly goes into determining whether a park should be a state park or a national, but comparing it other areas within the state and to other national parks that I´ve been to, the park seemed like a good candidate to be a state park. 

    * CVNP doesn´t have an official specific entry point. The park is not contained in one area. To get to the various trailheads, you have to drive on roads and to different towns where spots within the park are located. 

    * The overall size of the park is almost 51 square miles. It sits along the Cuyahoga River between the cities of Cleveland and Akron. It´s one of three national parks in the Great Lakes region. It´s unique because there are man made features to the park including structures connected to the Erie Canal.

    * Likely due to it not having a specific entry point, there is no entrance fee 😀 My brother has a national park pass but we did not need to use it due there being no entry fee. 

    * Though it doesn´t have a specific entry fee, there is a main visitors center called the Boston Mills Visitor Center. I would have liked to have visited the center. I love to read about the history of areas and just history in general. Plus picking up a souvenir would have been nice. But, it wasn´t open due to the federal government shut down. (Restrooms were still open within the park and some rangers were at the park though we didn´t see any.)

    * Speaking of the history, though we couldn´t go to the visitors center to learn more about the park, I did find some information online. The Cuyahoga River was once so polluted from oil/debris from industrial waste being dumped into it that it caught fire! The fire rose to five stories high and the uproar over it was so great that it prompted President Nixon to establish the Environment Protections Agency (EPA).  (Due in part to the river catching fire and general pollution of the area, people sometimes derisively refer to Cleveland as the ¨mistake on the lake.¨ The lake it´s referring to is Lake Erie; The Cuyahoga River is a large body of water near Cleveland as well.) Efforts to clean up the area including the Cuyahoga River and to preserve much of the undeveloped land between Cleveland and Akron, Congress created the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area in 1974. In 2000, the area was officially redesignated as Cuyahoga Valley National Park. 

    * While the park does lack a lot of the grandeur that you´d associate with a national park, it boasts a record- the largest waterfall in Ohio is in CVNP. The falls are called Brandywine Falls. It´s not a huge drop for record breaking waterfalls but it´s a record, nonetheless!

Thus concludes my ¨book report¨ on Cuyahoga Valley National Park :).

As for our visit, as I said before, everything worked out really well. The weather was great when we were there. It was a little warm the first afternoon but not hot by any means and there was a nice breeze to cool us off when the sun felt a little warm. The following day, it was cool but sunny and felt great to be outside in. The leaves were not quite at peak- we missed it perhaps by a week. Many of the leaves had changed color; the forest was bursting with color peak or no :).

Speaking of color and speaking of spending the night, when I was looking at places to spend the night in the area, I realized that you can stay inside the park! There is a bed and breakfast place called The Inn at Brandywine Falls. The website boasted of its close proximity to the falls which I knew we wanted to see. It sounded really cool to stay at a bed and breakfast inside the park. The price to stay at the Inn seemed quite reasonable and the inn itself looked charming. In short, I wanted to stay there, but alas there were no rooms in the inn available for when we were going to be there. If not the bed and breakfast, then La Quinta! We stayed at a La Quinta that was very reasonably price ($85 a night with a booking.com discount!), had good reviews re cleanliness, was very close to the places that we wanted to see, and a free breakfast to boot. We were not disappointed value wise, that is for sure.

But anyway, back to color and spending the night. Even though I realized that we couldn´t stay at the inn, I still poked around the website. As I said, it´s a really pretty property and I wanted to see more online since I wouldn´t be seeing the inside in person.

 The website boasted of the lovely two course breakfast that a Brandywine chef curates each day to create a unique menu to delight your palate! (I heavily paraphrased but didn´t directly quote from the website.)  Various items from each course certainly sounded good. BUT, what really caught my eye was this:

See the pretty table setting:

I zoomed in and noticed this:

It´s my table runner!! I have the same table runner as the Inn at Brandywine Falls!! I feel... seen as they say! Honored is another word- honored that someone on staff at the Brandywine and I have the same taste in table runners!!!

A further review reveals that they may not be exact but very similar with pumpkins in blue, blue gray and white appearing along with eucalyptus looking leaves. 

Our table runners may not be exactly the same but close; our ¨chef¨ breakfasts definitely would not be the same. If someone were to eat breakfast at our house, the fare would be more like my LaQuinta breaky: cooked eggs on a toasted bagel :).

Ok, so far only pictures of an inn and a table runner- not typical national park picture fodder, right?? I have many pictures on my phone and Nikon. I plan to do a separate post with mainly pictures at the park.