Hiking the Hocking--4/28

It has been raining all night. Love the sound of the rain on the roof of the RV. I think part of the pleasure comes from being warm and dry. It finally stops at 7 or so. We had planned to do the 34 mile bike ride on the Hocking Adena Bikeway trail from Athens to Nelsonville and back, but decide to hike instead because we figure the bike trail is going to be pretty waterlogged. Tomorrow we’ll do the bike trail. Today we’ll do the 6 mile hike to Cedar Falls and back. We drive down the ridge to the check-in parking lot, hike to the Visitor Center and read about local history, and then to Old Man’s Cave. This unglaciated area has been sculpted by water over the years and has stunning gorges and pools and waterfalls. The overlying sedimentary rock is harder than the underlying sandstone and as a result there are numerous caves that have been carved into the hillsides. The CCC’s were here in the 30’s and began creating the paths to some of the formations. Once you get past the paths from the parking lot to Old Man’s Cave, you are on part of the Buckeye Trail. This part is part of a proposed national hiking trail. In this part you need to do a lot of scrambling over rocks, climbing with the aid of roots, skirting mud. But it is stunning. We hike next to a fast running stream, in the bottom of a beautiful gorge. How I wish my camera was functioning! There are many trees that once clung to rocks and now have fallen and their roots make the most fascinating lacy tracery. We reach Cedar Falls, where the water is indeed falling with great volume over a ledge 100 feet above us. We decide to retrace our steps rather than hike along the top of the gorge and it is almost 2 by the time we are back to the RV.

Hunger. Headache. We head for Logan to eat lunch and check it out. Bush’s Restaurant looks likely. When we come in and see all the locals parked at the counter, we know we are home. Although there is a menu, there are sheets of paper taped up all around the counter, each listing an item from the menu and encased in plastic. Haven’t seen that way of presenting a menu before. I order beef and noodles, Norb gets the veal parmesan. The restaurant gradually empties out and we are the only ones left except for the waitress and the cook. We eavesdrop on their complaints about management—“Everybody is going to have to work on weekends.””I brought my kid in the other day and he reamed me out.” We gracefully exit to leave them in peace.

We stop at Wal-Mart for a few groceries and another basket for the RV (maybe the last one we’ll need). When we get back to the campsite, Norb gathers wood, so we spend a quiet evening in the RV. for a campfire. Later we eat light—Hahn’s hot dogs and chips. It is raining by then