Cascade Valley – Saturday, Nov. 14th

Saturday the 14th was a beautiful day, and it was “my” day, so we clearly needed to tromp around one of the excellent area parks. This day, I decided for an ambitious plan, and so we headed out to Cascade Valley Park.

Cascade Valley is on the edge of the Valley (there is only one major valley in Northeast Ohio, so everyone just calls it “the” Valley), and it is a circular trail that has the option to walk all the way down into the Valley, where it joins up with the Towpath trail. This was the longer and more difficult trail, so of course that is the option that I wanted to do.

The initial trail was beautiful. The leaves were down, but the trail staff had blown the leaves off the trail, so there would be no wondering where the trail went this week! Also, it was nice to be able to see the few rocks and roots that were around. There is a special beauty to a large forest with all the leaves down. It is stark, but striking, and you can see a lot more than you normally can. In the case of Cascade Valley, that meant that we could see the other side of the valley in places. We headed along the trail, which decended before too long, and rather steeply. We came to the point where the circular trail diverged from the Valley trail, and so we continued to head down. The Valley extension of the Cascade trail was not so well maintained – all the leaves were still on the trail.

It continued to be a fine hike. We laughed about how we were going to have to tromp all the way back up to the car. I expect Mer was laughing through a little worry, but she is a game soul. We stumbled across some very cool plants that still had all of their leaves, and they were all green. It was a moment right out of a fantasy film – everything around was grey and dead looking, and here was one tree-shrub that was still vibrant. Very neat.

We got all the way down to the Towpath, where I confidently struck out going right. I wanted to get to some restaurants in the Valley, and I was pretty sure they were in the direction I was going. After about a third of a mile, I was not so sure anymore, so we went back and I consulted a map on the trail. We struck out going back the same direction, and after about a half a mile, I could see some buildings that did not look right. We turned around and I confidently headed back in the other direction, passing the trail head where we had come out. After an additional half mile or so, we came up on Big Bend trailhead, which is next to the Towpath, and in the wrong direction. Ooops. We turned around and walked the full mile back into the area we had been aiming at the first two times.

Once we actually did get into the right area, we headed over to the Valley Cafe, which is a very pleasant little restaurant that we have been to from time to time. I was delighted that the menu was advertising whoopie pies, a dessert that I grew up with in Maine. The hostess informed us they were “huge.” When we passed them in the display case on the counter, they were about the diameter of a coffee mug. This is not “huge” in my book – I would have classified it as “small.” Anyway, we had a tasty, but whoopie-pie-free, lunch, and headed back along the trail.

The “up” section of the trail was not too strenuous. We took our time, and did not get too winded. We stopped along the second part of the Cascade Valley trail to look at the view over to the far side of the Valley. November was continuing to be the October we did not have, with beautiful sunny days and fairly warm temperatures.

Later that evening, we headed over to visit our friends the Gurnishes. Nate had invited us over for fried turkey, which I had never had before. There were some other people from CVCA there as well (LT Newland, Dubbs, and the Bollenbachers), so it was a festive little crowd. Nate and Rachel (the Gurnishes) are hospitiable folks anyway, but they had tons of food, all of which was available to be dunked in the fryer. I passed on most of the fried vegitables, (although they looked good), and ate a good amount of fried (wild) turkey, which was really tender and tasty. Mer and I had brought bread, so I ate a good amount of Rachel’s homemade jellies with the bread. We sat around a fire and ate and talked and laughed – it was a good time.