Eight days and one Cleveland later, we were exhausted and ready to go home, but stopped for one last tourist attraction anyway. Given all our choices along the way through Ohio, what better place for one last collection of outdoor greenery than The Only National Park in Ohio? It was no Green Mountains in Vermont, but then again, what is?

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip each year to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. We’re geeks more accustomed to vicarious life through the windows of pop culture than through in-person adventures. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any surrounding areas that also had comics and toy shops, we chucked some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own, from the horizons of nature to the limits of imagination, from history’s greatest hits to humanity’s deepest regrets and the sometimes quotidian, sometimes quirky stopovers in between. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2022 we wanted the opposite of Yellowstone. Last year’s vacation was an unforgettable experience, but those nine days and 3500 miles were daunting and grueling. Vermont was closer, smaller, greener, cozier, and slightly cooler. Thus we set aside eight days to venture through the four states that separate us from the Green Mountain State, dawdle there for a bit, and backtrack home…

Half an hour south of Cleveland is Cuyahoga Valley National Park, comprising over 32,000 acres that were once the home of the Lenapé Nation and their descendant tribes. In 1974 it was classified a National Recreational Area (I didn’t even know that was a thing), then promoted in 2000 to a full-on National Park. It’s also surrounded on most sides by several smaller parks, city-owned and otherwise. The greenery sprawls across several miles — nowhere near as massive as Yellowstone, but stretched out enough that driving from one end to the other in pursuit of their prettiest sights took quite a while. We tried to make the most of the morning we had.

Anne had hoped to see Brandywine Falls, which looked cool in their literature. Alas, a key bridge on that route was out. The only way to reach them was on foot, which a ranger at the Boston Mill Visitor Center told us would be a 5-mile round-trip hike. Perhaps if we were younger and/or this weren’t the last day of our vacation, we might’ve considered it. Instead we sought other waterways in the vicinity as consolation prizes.

To make matters worse, I’m pretty sure some of those shots weren’t even in the National Park itself, but rather in some of the wee side parks. We didn’t mind some extra moments stretching our legs in the idyllic outdoors, but these smaller offshoots weren’t quite a primary objective.

After several miles of light cruising, we took a harder look at the map we were given at the visitor center and chose a new target: the Ledges Overlook. We drove over and parked at the nearest lot, which was some hundreds of flat, manageable feet from the overlook. Some of that stretch included a large, treeless field that could’ve easily allowed visitors to organize football games or an entire farmers’ market. A trail nearly two miles long led down to the base of the ledges, but availing ourselves of that scenic view from below would’ve also meant walking nearly two miles back upward at the end. We contented ourselves with the overlook itself, as Anne demonstrates in our lead photo.

Once we’d had our fill of ledgey goodness, we took one last hop by car across the street to Kendall Lake so we could see at least one sizable body of water before we left. The largest lake in the park dates back to 1935 as a creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps. It was far nicer to experience in person than any thing, place, or person named Kendall that you might know or see in six million TV headlines this week.

It was well after 12 noon by the time we excused ourselves and headed west toward home. The nearest interstate was a few mere miles away from the National Park and from the same river that R.E.M. sang about back in ’87. And half an hour southwest of that, outside the town of Seville…

TOTAL ROAD TRIP MILEAGE AS OF GAS STOP #8: 1,973.

To be concluded!

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