Day 3: Cuyahoga National Forest, Ohio

The main downside to our stay here at the Hudson Baymont Inn & Suites has been the very sad 'continental' breakfast that the hotel serves. Since our room was inexpensive, they have to cut corners somewhere, I guess. Every morning, there have been the same old tired apples and oranges, some white and wheat bread, bagels, cereal and hard boiled eggs. There are a few mini donuts and danish, but I don't eat many sweets anymore and never for breakfast. There's a waffle maker with thin batter, not too appetizing. However, the room's clean and it was only $52 per night with 2 queen beds, microwave and refrigerator.

The smartest thing we did was to bring along some Starbucks 'Via' instant coffee, sugar and half and half. I was dubious about an instant coffee, but our morning cuppa joe is an absolute necessity, and we've been happily surprised at how good the Via Breakfast Blend is.

We started the 3rd day like our previous two: Steve left in the dark to be at a location at sunrise, while Rosie and I stayed at the hotel and enjoyed a leisurely morning. Steve returned at 9, and we headed to the Ledges parking lot where we'd arranged to meet a photographer named Tom Jones that Steve had emailed prior to our trip and who had been kind enough to offer to lead us to Stumpy Basin, an overlook that's rather obscure with no marked path.

Tom and his wife Bertha met us about 9:45 am. He's an elderly gentleman and I was surprised to learn he's turning 80 shortly. He had to drop his wife off at work, then we followed him to the path up to Stumpy Basin. We had a few false starts as there were some road closures and we had to backtrack, but we finally got there. The rugged path runs along the Ohio Turnpike, which was odd, but it is the best view of the valley once you get to the top. I'm embarrassed to admit that Tom was a better hiker than me, even though he's about 30 years older!

Falls colors haven't peaked yet, but it was still a great view. Tom said there's a turtle that lives at the top of the overlook who comes out to see him when he's up there shooting. Rosie and I found a lot of unusual mushrooms and fungus, and Tom said the moss and lichen that covers the ground is very old. He related that his wife's father–a Truxell–said it had always been there and had looked the same now as when he was a boy, and he had been almost 90 then. Coincidentally, Tom was wearing an Orcas Island cap, and that is where we spent our honeymoon and 10th anniversary. Tom's son, retired from Amazon.com, lives in the Seattle area and takes his parents to Orcas when they visit him.

We spent a half hour here, then trekked back to our cars and bade Tom goodbye. We decided to head to Chagrin Falls and look around and eat lunch. On the way, we stopped at the North Chagrin Reservation, which is a Cleveland metro park and is very scenic and wooded, but we didn't stay very long.

Chagrin Falls is a very neat little town. There's a town square, but it's actually more of a triangle. We ate at Fresh Start, and Rosie ended up with 2 VERY LARGE pancakes, which practically overhung her plate (she was only able to eat one of them). Steve got French toast but was disappointed that it was made from challah, a rather dense bread. I had an open face turkey sandwich, very good.

We walked around town, visiting the various shops and viewing Chagrin Falls right in the center of town. Little towns like this put New Albany to shame. Each shop had window boxes planted with flowers, there were hanging baskets of flowers on lampposts, the upper windows of the stores weren't boarded up, and there were nice benches and amenities for visitors.

After Chagrin Falls, we went to the South Chagrin Reservation, known for the marshes that attract wood ducks. This kind of duck is usually very timid and elusive and Steve's never been able to photograph them successfully, but he'd read they were not as skittish at South Chagrin. That was definitely true, and he was able to get several good shots, although Rosie and I had to keep luring the ducks into a certain area where the colors from the trees were reflecting on the water. It's not easy to get wood ducks to do what you want them to do!

The nature center was nice there, and Rosie and I went inside to give Steve more time to shoot and to escape the mosquitoes! They had 4 owls in the nature center–a barred owl, who was very curious about us, a great horned owl, who looked all-knowing, and 2 cute little eastern screech owls, one red morph and one grey morph. They had all been injured and were unable to be returned to the wild, and lived at the nature center.

Time to head back to the Park. The traffic was terrible in one area, and we were a little unsure just how to get back, but the GPS program got us back to our hotel, where we freshened up. We thought about going back to the Ledges for sunset, but ended up driving to near the Hale Farm and Village to get an idea where the church is that Steve wants to shoot. We saw so many deer, some of them in the fields along with cattle. It was dark after that drive, and we were all getting pretty hungry, so back to the Winking Lizard for a late dinner. We had a 45 minute wait so we walked around town to kill time. After dinner, very tired, back to the hotel. We've changed our minds about going into Cleveland tomorrow based on today's traffic, and will instead go to the Park to hike the Ledges trail and another area called the Icebox.