Category: Hiking the Buckeye Trail

February 21, 2014 I dropped the remote from my fingers and replaced it with my phone. Wait until Bob hears the seven-day forecast I happened upon: highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s—and this in mid-August! I implored him to arrange an escape from his office for a mid-week hike. This weather was too good to waste. He did, we planned, and three days later we met at the trailhead at East Fork State Park. We set off from there at 1:00 pm, prepared to stay overnight and return to our cars sometime …

January 18, 2014 It was an unusually mild December day, perfect weather for a walk down those lonely back roads. We weren’t hunters, and we trusted our bright colors to alert the people with rifles that we were not deer, either. I listened as my hiking partner, Andrew Purdy (aka Yogi), detailed our mission to a curious gent in that rural part of southeast Ohio. The man sat on his porch enjoying the Indian summer day. He rarely saw hikers happen by. Yogi explained that he was on leave from the Navy and was hiking …

October 23, 2013 I’ve always had a vibrant social life. Even as a child I had countless friends who would come over to play ball and hike with me. OK, so most were imaginary. But I must say that, even so, I did get along very well with them. Of course, there are always a few spoilsports in every bunch. If someone came around who wasn’t nice, I would just tell him that I wasn’t allowed to play that day. Avoidance is another of my social strategies. Then came the school thing. I needed to …

  September 3, 2013 It was a diverse group of hikers shuttled by our trail angels to point 9 of the Bedford section of the Buckeye Trail. Bob had hiked the entire AT twice. On the greener end of the scale, it was Paula’s first backpacking trip; she had borrowed some nice gear from a neighbor. The rest of us fell somewhere in between. The first day was glorious and all off-road. We camped at Squaw Rock Shelter in South Chagrin Reservation after a