A Fun Winter Morning with My Grandson Colin

First thing, a class on junco birds at the Children's Schoolhouse Nature Center in Kirtland Hills. Then snowshoeing at Penitentiary Glenn Metropark in Kirtland. Then home, for bubble-blowing and baking blueberry muffins with Nana Linda. What a day for the boys!

Colin, making paper juncos at the Children's Schoolhouse Nature Center facility.

Colin's junco.

The Schoolhouse was built in 1898! The ranger rang the bell as we left the building.

The ranger took us for a short walk around the schoolhouse. We looked for likely junco nest locations.

Colin snowshoeing at Penitentiary Glenn Metropark.

Harder to walk on snowshoes than you'd think!

A cold, snowy day in Kirtland, Ohio.

A short video of Colin on snowshoes.

At Penitentiary Glenn.

Robby and Colin blowing bubbles with Nana Linda.

The boys were really in to this!

New Bridge over Big Creek at Girdled Road Reservation

One of our favorite parks is the Girdled Road Reservation. The hike from Radcliffe Road to Girdled Road is about 2.6 miles, give or take (the last stretch involves a lot of steps!). The round trip is then about 5.2 miles. Lake MetroParks has just finished building a suspension foot bridge linking the Skok Meadow property, entered from Rt. 608, to the Girdled Road Reservation.

The Girdled Road Reservation has magnificent mature forests, ponds, Big Creek itself, some small cataracts, many smaller creeks, and lots of ups and downs. In the spring it has magnificent displays of wildflowers. We love it in all seasons.

This beautiful new suspension bridge links Skok Meadow to Girdled Road Reservation

Looking north up Big Creek

Linda crossing the bridge

Reminds Linda of the swinging bridges in Kentucky!

Indian Point Park--in Leroy Township, Ohio

Indian Point is a beautiful and very interesting Metropark in Leroy Township, about 5 miles south of Painesville, Ohio. It is on a  triangular ridge, high above the confluence of Paine Creek and the Grand River. This was the site of an Indian Fort that dates back over 2000 years.

The fort area has built-up palisades that presumably were fortifications

A long stairway takes you from the fort are down to the creek-river confluence

Blooms of a silver maple along the Grand River

This is the confluence. A fisherman here was after steelhead trout

Me on a strange white sycamore

Looking up toward the hilltop fort from Paine Creek

The stairs as seen from the top

Gigantic hemlock and white pine around the fort area. Some are 150 feet tall and probably 200+ years old.

Looking from the hilltop across the swollen Grand River

Indian Point is adjacent to Paine Falls Metropark and Hell Hollow Metropark. Hell Hollow is called a wilderness (by a rather loose definiton of the term "wilderness"). All in all, this is an amazing natural area that protects the Grand River watershed. Besides the great natural beauty here, there is important cultural and historic dimensions to this area.

At Penitentiary Glenn, Lake Metroparks

Moi, at the edge of the deep ravine, Penitentiary Glenn Metropark

[The inscription, partially visible above, states, "Within ourselves there is a deep place at whose edge we may sit and dream." - Lehrman.]

Well, this is indeed a deep ravine, And right now the creek running through it is chock full of ice. Gigantic icicles creep down the cliffs of this gully. When I first saw this area the locals (my cousins Jerry and Mickey Coughlin and their friends) called it “Penitentiary Gully,” explaining if you ever fell into the gully, you wouldn't be able to get out--as if you were in a penitentiary. That's the story, and I'm sticking to it.

I came very close to getting arrested here once, around 1964 or 1965. I had borrowed my Dad's little sports car, a jerry-rigged mish-mash of a car, called an "Innocenti." My buddy Jed Korthals and I drove out to Kirtland to look at the ruins of the old Halle mansion, right along this creek in the gully. We parked on Booth Road, I believe, and walked down to the ruins of the mansion (the ruined house was still standing at that time). We walked through the place and then tried crossing a broken-down suspension bridge that crossed the creek. The floorboards of the bridge were gone and all we had to step on were cross-beams, each about 4 feet away from the next beam. And then four feet away again, and so on (hard to explain this--wish I could draw a picture here!). In the middle of this broken-down bridge, I was stung by many hornets. But there was no way to hurry off the bridge. I was just going to have to suffer through the stings. While I was in the middle of the bridge, I heard the horn of the Innocenti honking, over and over. Jed and I finally got off the bridge then ran to the car. There, 2 people were on horses, with several kids around the car, trying to let air out of the tires.

When I confronted these people, one woman on the horse said to me, "What are you doing here? You're trespassing!"

I responded, "We just wanted to look at the Halle mansion that my cousins told me about."

"Where are you boys from?" she asked.

"Euclid."

"Ah, it was Euclid boys that burned down this mansion! I've called the Sheriff. He'll be here soon.

Well, this wasn't good news. Besides our trespassing, I happened to have what looked like a gun in the car. It was just a starter's pistol that my brother Denny and I used when practicing our track and field skills. But it looked like a real gun.

After waiting a very long time, with the sheriff not arriving, the lady on horseback said to us, "You boys stay here until the sheriff comes. I have to get back to the house. Then she and her friend left, as did the children. Soon as they left, Jed and I were gone in a flash. We escaped. No trespassing. No possession of a firearm. Just a good story to tell.

Linda Sanders-Coughlin

Skiing in Chapin Forest, Kirtland, Ohio

Great day, perfect day for cross-country skiing! Chapin Forest and Gildersleve Mountain in Kirtland, Ohio--in the great Lake County Metroparks.

Bob, atop Gildersleve Mountain, Chapin Forest

Good thing there are straw bales here!

"Ski Heil!" --as we used to say in Austria.

Carolan atop Gildersleve Mountain.

Hike in the Big Creek Valley, Girdled Road Reservation

Big Creek Valley (Girdled Road Reservation)

Beech Tree

Red Maple

Flowering Dogwood

Girdled Road Reservation Trail

Leef Litter on the Trail

Crabapple Tree

Today I took a long hike in a local Metropark, the Girdled Road Reservation, which is in Leroy Township and Concord Township, Lake County, Ohio. One of the trails is in the Big Creek Valley, through spectacular forest--sugar maple, beech, red oak, dogwood, witch hazel, tuliptree, white sycamore, wild black cherry, red maple, etc.

It's amazing how wild this park is--and how diverse and wonderful the Lake Metropark system. The Lake Parks include miles of Lake Erie's shoreline as well as deep, mature forests. One park, Hell's Hollow, is very wild indeed. Several of the parks are visited by black bear--and this is in the Greater Cleveland area--a densely populated region. One big secret about Greater Cleveland is the natural beauty of the area, preserved in the Cleveland, Lake, Geauga, and Summit metroparks. And we have the Cuyahoga Valley National Park as a huge bonus! Oh yes--we also have the 11th largest lake in the world just to the north--big, beautiful Lake Erie.

A Day for the History Books! And Indian Summer in Northeast Ohio.

What can you say about yesterday, November 4, 2008, that hasn't already been said? It's a day that will go down in American and world history. I fell asleep as history was being proclaimed last night--around 11PM Eastern Standard Time. Then the phone rang--Carolan calling me from Colorado to tell me the news. I was groggy and she was jubilant. Luckily I was able to get to the television to hear Barack Obama's speech. I was especially impressed by his message to those who didn't vote for him. He promised to listen to their voices, to be their president too. I hope he is indeed a unifier, a person who will bridge the political chasm. I was also proud to see Joe Biden on the stage, a man of Irish-American heritage and a Catholic. He will be only the second Catholic in the White House. Oddly, it feels as if my tribe is taking over the reigns of power (and it's funny to say this because Barack is a genuine Black-American and I am, at most, maybe Black-Irish (as my Dad used to say--he thought we had Spanish or Moorish (North African) blood via our Irish heritage)). I guess I can say, a bit ironically, "I'm Black and I'm proud!"

Indian Summer. Today is the sweetest, most gorgeous day of the year in Northeast Ohio. I spent my lunch hour walking through a Lake County MetroPark, Penitentiary Glenn. Where is there a more beautiful forest? Though we are past our autumn color peak, the colors here were still incredible. Mostly yellows, with bronzes, a bit of red, and some browns. I saw a crabapple tree in perfect sunshine, all yellow leaves with the reddest crabapples all over it. I saw beech, sugar maple, and glorious red and chestnut oaks. There were yellow sassafras trees, gigantic basswood trees, red maple, and many species I couldn't identify. Along the edge of the trail was the steep ravine, with lots of Canadian hemlock along the rim and slopes. A glorious cloudless blue-sky gentle day in Northeast Ohio.