Ohio and the Underground Railroad, Part 2
The Ohio to Erie Trail has continued to deliver, with lush forests, meandering creeks, vast open farm land, and small towns. We stayed outside London, Ohio in a little house on a tiny bluff above Little Darby Creek. There were bird feeders just outside the large windows and we sat inside looking out at woodpeckers, robins, and others we could not name. It was magical. Big and Little Darby Creeks were named national scenic rivers — I had no idea there was such a thing. Over 100 species of fish and 40 species of mollusk have been identified within their watersheds.
On this stretch of the trail we became enamored of the Sycamore (Plane) tree, which rises majestically in riparian areas because it thrives in wet ground. Here is one:
Coming out of Gambier, I saw this colony of nests, likely vultures:
And we passed under this arch, which had stones marked with the initials of the stonemasons who built it:
Somewhere in there we entered Amish country, and shared the trail with their horses and buggies. Here is one parked at the buggy shed at Walmart:
The Amish farms are quite bucolic.
Here is the lovely town of Millersburg:
Heading out of Millersburg, we stopped for coffee at the Broken Ground Coffee House, which doubles as a house of worship on Sundays, with music:
The congregation raises money for the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota through proceeds from the coffee house and the sale of art and crafts made by residents of the res.
In Akron, we holed up for three days to wait out the rain. I stopped by the Akron Museum of Art and saw a Keith Haring exhibit. I had not appreciated his work previously. Here’s one:
And another:
On to the Towpath Trail through the Cuyahoga National Forest — absolutely magical. Marshes, forests, a winding river, herons, woodland ducks, swallows, beaver, and more. We loved it. It followed the Ohio and Erie Canal, the first canal west of the Appalachian mountains, dug by hand between 1825 and 1832.
We stayed with a Warm Showers host in Hudson, Ohio, which felt like a New England town (originally part of the expansive Western Reserve of Connecticut — who knew Connecticut was an empire? — so that makes sense).
Hudson has a long tradition of being an anti-slavery town. The town’s founder, John Hudson, hid escapees in his home; John Browns’ father Owen Brown, lived there. In the 1830’s there was a split between the colonization movement (those who supported founding of a free colony in Africa for former slaves) and abolitionists. As a result, Owen Brown withdrew his financial support for Case Western College and helped found Oberlin College as a multi-racial school. He also split from a local church and founded a new one that required an oath against slavery for admission.
After a night at the home of Jonathan Smith, an old friend of Albert’s, we headed to Cleveland. Our visit here requires a whole separate blog post so that’s coming next!