In 2008 I started a project that involved putting a book together about Ohio’s State parks. I visited a lot of the parks, but because of the size of the project and the distance I would have needed to travel to get to all of the parks, it was put on hold for a while. I have decided to revisit that project this year, and I will focus on the parks closest to me first, with the hopes of putting together a book about the parks in the South-East region of Ohio. I was hoping to get some winter shots, but this January, and especially this week, hasn’t really been typical winter. I did visit three parks this week, one of which I had not been to before.
On the way to Wolf Run State Park we passed through a lot of old mining lands. AEP has opened up a lot of this land for recreation, and trail heads, and equestrian areas are available for public use. We stopped at this park, which is essentially closed for the season, so we didn’t go up close.
The next stop was Wolf Run. There is a pretty large lake there, but unfortunately the trail that runs along it was closed while we were there. There is also a section of the Buckeye trail that runs through the east edge of the park. We hiked a short circular trail called the Cherry Tree trail that was about a half mile long. It started with a pine forest and then went through a mixed hardwoods area with a small stream. Since this was our first visit we will have to make a trip back to get a better feel for the park.
Then we visited Blue Rock State Park which is located within Blue Rock State Forest. We had visited before. It is near The Wilds Animal Park and we had stopped here on the way home from visits to The Wilds. We walked through a portion of the campground and up to the Dam spillway. Again, I will need to visit on a nicer day. It was warm, but grey, which was sort of the theme for the week.
Then on Wednesday I visited Lake Alma State Park with a friend. Once again a grey day. The only color was in the rust of the red bridge. I had last visited in 2008, and they have made some improvements. I posted a 2008 picture below the two recent ones. We walked almost all of the trails there and got in about 4 miles. The trails aren’t well maintained in places and we actually couldn’t find it in a few areas. You were never very far from the lake though, so there was little worry of getting lost.
