Saturday, November 7th, was a Meredith date-day. We started the day off in a mellow manner, with Mer going off to get her hair cut. She then took me out to lunch, once again trying and failing to eat at Johnny J’s pub. This time, the place was packed for some Saturday college football game, and we could not see anywhere to sit down. So, instead, we ate at a nearby Bruegger’s Bagels. Once fortified, Mer directed me to the west, through the Valley and west of Akron. We ended up in Hinckley.

Hinckley is a nice enough place, which is oddly known for the return of some buzzards every year to the town. Leave it to Ohio to have a famous buzzard town. We were not there for the birds, though – Mer wanted to try a new park. This time, it was the most southern of the Cleveland Metro Parks, the Hinckley Reservation park. I’m not really sure why it is called a reservation; maybe it is because of the lake, which may or may not be a water supply. I do not know.

Nonetheless, after one short wrong turn, we found ourselves at the park. We looked at the map on the bulletin board, and liked the look of a particular trail marked out by a bird symbol. We started walking along a well-kept horse trail, and found our trail head. It was….less taken care of. All the leaves were down, and it was a bit difficult discerning where the trail went. We marched on, and came to a stream where there seamed to be no way of crossing it. We had seen a few blazes marking the trail (which at times was the only way to tell that we were on a trail), so we retraced our steps back to a blaze, and then managed to spot another one. This one led to a small ford to get over the stream, and then led up a very steep, leaf- covered hill. I was having a blast, but I’m afraid Meredith had visions of spending the night in the woods. We got to the ridge and followed a better- looking trail that came out on the horse trail again. We verified from another hiker that we were headed back to the parking lot, and when we got there, we checked the map again. It turns out the “trail” we were on on top of the ridge was not on the map at all – we had turned the wrong way onto an unmarked trail. Ooops. It all turned out well. We’ll have to check out the real trail when the leaves are back on the trees so we can actually see the path.

Since we still had some daylight left, we drove the short distance over to the lake. It is held artificially high by a dam, which is what makes me think it might be drinking water. Anyway, it had a wide path all the way around the  lake, so we walked it about one third of the way around and turned back. I wanted to go all the way around, but it was Mer’s day, and it turned out she was the wiser one. By the time we got back to the car, it was quite dark. It still had been a lovely walk. We even came back to the area the next day (Sunday) to hike along some of the ledges in the area that border a (the?) valley. We also tried to hike the trail on the other side of the lake, but could not find it (there was a private residence in the way, and we could not find a way around the house).

We headed home, where we curled up on the couch and watched the modern (Leonardo DiCaprio) version of Romeo and Juliet. It was okay – parts of it worked really well (I really liked Romeo and Juliet talking to each other after they accidentally fall into the pool – it is beautifully shot), and other parts of it did not work so well (some of the settings strained to fit the dialogue). For whatever reason, I always feel that Romeo and Juliet is about 15 minutes too long – I get restless toward the end of the play; I do not know why. Happily, our day and evening went better than the story of the star-crossed lovers.