Hocking Hills     07/17 – 24/23

Hocking Hills State Park, Logan, Ohio

You are the light of the world.  A city on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.  Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in Heaven. ~ Matthew 5:14-16     How intact is your bowl?  I feel like mine’s always been in fairly good condition, but I’ve noticed that over the past years, it’s getting more and more cracks and holes in it that let the Light out.  Jesus says that as Christ-followers, we are the light of the world.  As with salt, He doesn’t tell us that we can be, or should be, but we ARE light.  And so we should BE light.  Especially now in this world of great darkness.

I blamed Blaine for this post being late, when in reality, it’s my fault! I was supposed to go in and check somethings, then publish . . . . Needless to say . . . . I forgot! Sorry!

I’m thinking that my posts will be different than before.  Rather than posting something every day, I’m going to try cutting back to once a week or something else appropriate for our time away from the house.  This post will cover our first week at Hocking Hills State Park.

No one who is faint of heart or short of leg or anthropophobic should visit Hocking Hills State Park. 

We’ve been here several times over the years.  It’s a stunning place to visit, but times have changed it.  It’s now so crowded many of the trails are one-way and form a loop. It’s not our kind of hiking.  Oftentimes, especially on the more popular trails, we found ourselves walking single file like a herd of cattle. (Anthropophobia – fear of people) You can’t take time to enjoy what God created, nor can you go at your own pace.  You’re at the mercy of whomever started this cattle drive. 

Case in point.  We walked the Old Man’s Cave trail three times this week.  It wasn’t until our final day, when we headed out a little before 7:30am that we could really enjoy it.

Still, all in all, we enjoyed a wonderful week!  And now, since I’m encapsulating an entire week, I get to try to remember it with the few pictures we took.  Don’t worry.  There’ll still be plenty of drama.  Let me just preface this week by saying, it’s probably a good thing I have health insurance, even though I haven’t needed it . . . yet.  Check it out!

7/18 – It’s Tuesday, and this morning I baked my ‘famously delicious’ lemon muffins – – and zested my right thumb knuckle in the process.  Ouch!  Can you say, extra protein?  😊  This afternoon, we chose to take a walk from our campsite to Old Man’s Cave.  There aren’t many pictures because of the crowd. 

7/19 – It’s drama time!  But not till the end of the day.  We walked the Gorge Rim Trail, and made our way over to check out Rock House.  It’s another one-way trail, bringing us in from the opposite direction we use to come when we brought our boys down here.  Still the same Rock House though – just with more people milling about.  😊  They were working on part of the trail here, too. 

In looking for things to do in the area, I came across another hike that wasn’t part of the State Park – Chapel Cave.  We had directions, but once we arrived in a parking lot just off the road, there was no signage whatsoever, other than a rappelling sign.  So we took off across the street in search of – – – something – – –  to point us in the right direction.  Nada.  Zippo.  Zilch.

We did however, come across a pair of horseback riders who pointed us in the direction of a cave they’d seen, but didn’t visit because of some rickety wooden bridges they didn’t think they should take their horses across.  So off we went.  And we found what they mentioned, but it wasn’t Chapel Cave.

Oh well.  It was still an interesting hike!

Until.

Just before we reached the road we’d crossed, I evidently stumbled into a nest of type of ground-dwelling stingers with really bad tempers – wasps, hornets, killer bees?  Whatever it was, one bit the back of my left Achilles tendon just above my boot.  Yeeouch!!!

And then I heard Blaine yelling “Owww!!!” and “Get going!!!”  And we both made a bee-line (pun intended) for the Jeep and safety!  Poor Blaine got it in both Achilles!  We made it back with no further injections and thought we were okay.

Did you catch the word ‘thought’?

Throughout the rest of our day and evening, we both suffered intermittent moments of sharp pain.  Crazy!!

By the time we retired for the day, even those had subsided and we thought we were out of the woods.  Ha!  7/21 will bring you the rest of the story . . .

Below are our pictures from today.

7/20 – We have virtually no cell or internet service around the area, so today, we drove about 30 minutes into the library in the town of Logan.  Yep.  That’s the address for the State Park, but the drive to town is a half hour away.  Nice place.  Cute town.  Blaine worked on his important stuff, I researched a few things, including where to spend my upcoming birthday.  And then he was finished and it was time to head home.  That’s it for today! No pictures.

7/21 – Blaine tried to kill me today.  We added 34,222 steps to our boots, many of which were difficult!  But what a terrific time we had – even taking in some places that weren’t so busy.  By the way, that’s the equivalent of about 16 miles.    

Let’s back up to the beginning of the day when I climbed out of bed and couldn’t walk.

My left ankle blew up during the night!  From the bite I received the day-before-yesterday!  Nothing yesterday and then today . . .  Wham!  My skin was stretched so tight it hurt to walk!  A lot!

Turns out, I’m 10% of the population.  No surprise there.  That’s pretty typical when things happen to/around me.  😊

There was a short conversation about whether or not we’d attempt the lengthy hike we had planned for the day, but since the pain wasn’t muscle or bone related, I announced I was going.  I put on my long winter, tighter fitting hiking socks and laced up my boots a bit extra, and felt no pain for the duration.  Thank You, Father!

Once I got the gear off though, it started again with itching, and the swelling came back, and just like that little blurb I took a picture of said, this went on for several days.  How crazy is that?!?

You can see the “Democracy Steps” in the background. We did not find them to meet the expectations in the sign. In fact, both of us felt they were more difficult to navigate because they weren’t uniform. I guess that’s what they mean by “interesting”?

7/22 – Our second time on the Old Man’s Cave Trail wasn’t any less busy than the first time, in fact, since it was Saturday, it was a bit worse, but in order to get to the less-traveled Whispering Cave Trail, we had to do it.  We hiked several hours again today, and ended our sight-seeing at the Lodge for a much needed (and air-conditioned) rest.  This Lodge is new, just completed last October.  Looked real nice!

Having visited Old Man’s, Ash and Whispering Caves, we’ve determined we prefer Whispering.  Maybe it’s encountering fewer bodies, or maybe we just like the scenery better, but if we had to choose one, that would be our choice.

7/23 – It’s Sunday, and we left early to drive out of the Park and check out Cantwell Cliffs, then back to locate Chapel Cave.  Both had beautiful scenery!  Blaine had done a bit more research and discovered that Chapel Cave could be found along the trail on the opposite end of the parking lot.  Thank goodness we wouldn’t have to watch for attacking predators this time! 

For this trail, you just follow the horse prints and you can’t get lost.  Problem is, as it turned out, the horses weren’t going to Chapel Cave.  Still, we found a wonderfully huge one!  We were certain it was Chapel Cave, but on the way back, near the start, we noticed a map-sign near the parking lot on a trail we didn’t hike, so Blaine went to check it out.  He never met a map he didn’t want to read.  😊  It informed us that what we saw was most definitely NOT Chapel Cave.  Drat and double drat! (since we’ve tried twice now)

Beginning our walk to Chapel Cave – – that wasn’t.

7/24 – It’s moving day, but we don’t have to check out until 1:00pm, so we did our final hikes.  First up, an early morning (7:15am) hike on the Old Man’s Cave Trail.  What a blessed experience!  We found ourselves in the quiet calm praising our Lord for His Creation, and the only people we saw until near the end was another older couple who walked even slower than we were. Did I mention it was quiet?  Did I mention we could actually stop and look at things?  Ahhhhh . . . . . Third time’s a charm! 

And then we went in search of Chapel Cave.  Again.  And again, third time’s a charm!

It was a wonderful hike, and again, there was no one around.

So.

We’re zipping along on this trail that is well-traveled by us, by others, and by horses.  And the trail – because it’s well-traveled by horses, has a lot of really muddy spots, so you have to keep to the edges a lot of the time.

Anyway, back to zipping along.

I can’t even describe to you what happened because it happened so fast.  Neither can Blaine.  But we suspect the toe of my left boot got hung up under an exposed root. One minute I was vertical, the next I was completely and totally horizontal on the hard-packed trail.  There was no flailing.  No bracing for impact.  It was kinda like a cartoon.  Vertical, then horizontal.  Faster than you can say it.  Blaine was standing over me.  I could feel his hands on my sides.  And I heard some groaning (mine), and the only pain I felt was in my right thumb (the zested one).

I stood up, with some help, brushed the dirt off the entire front of my body from the neck down (Thankfully, my face didn’t hit the ground), complained about my thumb hurting (Which I think was stoved.  I have hard nails, and I think the nail was pushed into my finger a bit.  Some how.), put the bottle of ice water Blaine was carrying on it the best I could and off we went.

No soreness, except my thumb.  But it’s definitely not broken.  God is good!  So is my guardian angel who’s probably getting tired of saving me from myself this week.

Back home, we packed up and hit the road by 1:00pm, headed for the Columbus area.

Today’s trail pictures, but none of me lying flat on the ground. 😊

And that’s our week! We’ll be staying the Columbus area for the next two weeks before heading back to our house in Ohio, so I may not post again until then. We’ll see.