Cuyahoga Valley National Park & Cleveland, OH

Continuing our Midwest National Parks tour, next was Cuyahoga Valley, park #48/64 for us. We stayed in the town of Stow’s Silver Springs Campground, which is the closest option to all the main sites. It is a great campground but not really big-rig friendly. We brushed tree branches on the way in and out and didn’t even attempt to use the dump station.

Cuyahoga Valley NP is in a very urban area between Cleveland and Akron. We started early with the Ledges trail to beat the crowds. We listened in on some of the ranger-led tour and learned that this area is called the Green Room.

Next, we went the Boston Mill Visitor Center, in an old train station next to the Cuyahoga River. Due to pollution from all the industry in the area, this river caught fire over a dozen times in the 100 year period until the last time in 1969, which led to the creation of the EPA, the Clean Water Act, and eventually the National Park designation.

That afternoon we visited Beaver Marsh, bought Michael a new office chair at Office Max, went to Brandywine Falls, and then went to Costco. Running errands between visiting National Park sites was a first!

We spent our 2nd weekend day exploring Cleveland, which was a pleasant surprise.

Cleveland Script Sign – Tremont. There are several of these signs around the city.

We started out at the West Side Market, which was amazing! It reminded us of Pike Place in Seattle, minus the tourists.

We went to Edgewater Park so that I could see where Michael and one of his co-workers kayaked along the Lake Erie shoreline earlier in the week.

Next, we headed for Little Italy. After lunch at Mama Santa, we went into the little Italian American Museum of Cleveland. The man volunteering that day knew Michael’s family and said “Oh, the grape juice family”! Michael’s great grandpa lived in Collinwood, another Italian neighborhood nearby, and had a business bringing grapes from California and selling grape juice to the local winemakers. How cool is that?!