Hiking Ohio's Hocking Hills
LOGAN, Ohio -- The lavender orchid, barely an inch out of the soil, turned its dainty face toward the trail and its back on the sandstone slab looming overhead. In the wilds of Ohio's Hocking Hills, the mite and the mighty have negotiated their own peaceable kingdom.
It's both the intimacy and immediacy of the Hocking Hills that make them popular with nearly 3 million visitors each year.
Some hikers love winter, when sound itself is frozen save the bite of boot on frost. That is the secret season, when the hills take their jewels from the vault: crystal on every branch, diamonds along every stream, platinum in every waterfall. Few people dare the twisting trails and ice-scooped staircases when the waterfalls freeze to cut-glass chandeliers.
But with spring's breezy tendrils and summer's first rays, backpackers arrive by the vanful, seeking a leisurely escape from laptops and cell phones. Others, still enslaved to their Blackberries, steal time to swing through this quiet pocket of southeast Ohio for a quick, calming wildflower-and-waterfall fix before returning to the breakneck current of the 21st century.
While hikers are connecting the dots between fragile wildflowers and roaring waterfalls, other visitors pack their field guides and grow giddy, counting up to 130 separate tree species. Oak and hickory rule the ridge tops, beech and maple claim the slopes, and cold-weather hemlocks, birch and sycamores thrive in the gorge bottoms as they have since "glaciers shoved Canada all the way down to these hills," said Pat Quackenbush, Hocking Hills State Park naturalist.
A new canopy zip line cuts through the forests, with explorers hooking on and swinging from platform to platform.
The gorges' distinctive Canadian microclimate makes for a true mixed forest, unusual in America. In turn, the trees attract their own rare birds, such as the worm-eating warbler and the Canada warbler.
The park has a new Hocking Valley Birding Trail to help birders track the spring warbler migration and admire up to 126 species throughout the year. The trail rambles through aquatic habitats, deep forest, open grasslands and even reclaimed strip mines. Species range from the eastern bluebird and whippoorwill to the red-shouldered hawk and bald eagle.
Everyone who returns yearly to these deep hollers in the Appalachian foothills has a favorite spot. Many consider Conkles Hollow one of the best spring retreats: The rim trail gives a vertiginous sweep 220 feet down into its dramatic "Little Grand Canyon of Ohio" below. Just as violets, orchids and trilliums open their petite petals, the hollow's 13 waterfalls defrost with the welcome vernal runoff. And what's in between the scrub pine on the arid canyon rim above and the Canadian hemlock forest below? Just air.
Like most of the stunning formations in the Hocking Hills, Conkles Hollow owes its drama to nature's vulnerability. On this unglaciated Allegheny Plateau, the distinctive Black Hand sandstone has an essential weakness.
Its soft central layer, sandwiched between two harder sedimentary strata like brie between crusty French bread, tended to wash away when melting glacial waters from the north gushed over the landscape 14,000 years ago. The gnawing waves eroded the rock into astonishing waterfalls, gorges, recesses and arches, but not - and this is heresy in Hocking County - into true caves.
True caves are dissolution of limestone underground, while shelters are erosions above ground. The distinction is important to naturalists, but it doesn't change any hiker's love of the region's hallmarks: Old Man's Cave and Ash Cave.
"In a true cave, you go in and lose sight of the entrance," Quackenbush said. "We have giant overhangs. I sometimes say we should change the name to Old Man's Recess Cave, but it'll never catch on."
Old Man's Cave, supposed home to hermit Richard Roe after the Civil War, is a glorious gorge with a brace of waterfalls and a giant, swirling pothole called the Devil's Bathtub.
If someone tumbles into the bathtub, the old joke is rescuers will have a devil of a time getting him out.
"We do have to set up ropes," Quackenbush said. "A person can't get out on his own."
Ash Cave, the largest rock recess in Ohio, has its own 95-foot waterfall and awesome dimensions. Walk in as far as you can, and it's like being swallowed by a giant clam, its scalloped shell hovering overhead.
When the cave was discovered, it was full of ashes from Indian campfires. The Shawnee and several other tribes hunted buffalo and elk on these Hocking Hills ledges.
Black Hand sandstone is named for American Indian lore. A black palm print, painted on the sandstone east of Newark along the Licking River, was said to point the way to Flint Ridge, an important source of flint for fires and tools during the American Indian era.
Linking Hocking Hills' wildflowers and waterfalls is a system of nature preserves and state parks and forests, slowly quilted together out of old farmsteads, logging camps and rolling hillsides just too cussedly vertical for any exploitation. Some of the best hiking is along the gentle, connecting paths between spectacles, with the loamy trails following streams, veering up cliffs and angling through wildflower glens.
This is friendly Midwestern woodland. The trees are tall yet not intimidating, the streams free-flowing yet not scary, the trails invigorating yet not exhausting. This is a human-scale adventure sandwiched, like the softer layers of Black Hand sandstone, between the rock climbing and rappelling at Big Spring Hollow and the rigorous challenges of trekking at nearby Cantwell Cliffs.
The protected lands now encompass about 10,000 acres, and the second-growth forest is thriving.
"There's a rugged, wild feeling here," Quackenbush said, "and I like to see the look in people's eyes. But it's everyday adventure, with so many things to discover - not just the large formations, but a fern in a crack or liverwort that looks like carpet on a rock. Whether you go small or look at the great rocks, there are so many new experiences."
Some of the more avid defenders of wilderness are dismayed by the recent growth on the surrounding land, with hundreds of cabins and cottages blossoming on the hardscrabble hills. Although commerce is welcome in southeast Ohio, the state's poorest region, many longtime visitors are hoping change comes gently. They like wandering through the mom-and-pop gift shops, buying wind chimes and whirligigs for the garden.
Two of the Hills' most homespun enterprises are gaining surprising fame. Rand McNally Atlas chose two quirky stops in the Hocking Hills for its 2006 editors' "Best of the Road" picks: The Columbus Washboard Factory and Etta's Lunchbox Cafe and General Store.
The Columbus Washboard Factory in Logan is the nation's last remaining washboard manufacturer, making more than a dozen types of washboards on century-old equipment - and spotlighting the world's largest washboard, 24 feet tall. The factory welcomes tours and throws an annual Washboard Music Festival.
Nearby, Etta's Lunchbox Cafe and General Store in New Plymouth is an old-time emporium launched by LaDora Ouesely and named for her grandmother, Etta. Ouesely combines a popular game with her sandwiches. She's ringed the walls with some of her more than 650 vintage lunchboxes, dating back to the 1940s. Pick out your childhood tote - maybe over a Hobo Ham Steak of fried-bologna and sauteed onions on potato bread - and she'll guess your age.
Clever as Ouesely may be, no amount of human skill can match the awe-inspiring natural power of the Hocking Hills, and that's what motivates visitors to return season after season. No architect's creation is as imposing as these massive boulders, no brushstrokes as delicate as a Johnny-jump-up and no taped guitar strum as lilting as a magnolia warbler song.
Ohio's Hocking Hills
GO: If you love hiking and fresh air
NO: If you prefer room service and night life
Need to know: Hocking Hills Convention & Visitors Bureau, (800) 462-5464, www.1800hocking.com
Getting there: The Hocking Hills are about 400 miles from Chicago. Take I-90 or I-80/94 to I-65, travel south to Indianapolis then east on I-70 to Columbus, Ohio. Take U.S. Route 33 to Logan, Ohio, and Ohio Route 664 into the Hocking Hills region.
American, United and US Airways have nonstop flights to Columbus from O'Hare and Southwest flies nonstop from Midway.
Megabus (www.megabus.com) has bus service from Chicago's Union Station to Columbus.
Planning your trip: The Hocking Hills network encompasses about 9,000 acres of state forest and about 600 acres of state nature preserve, including Old Man's Cave, Ash Cave, Conkles Hollow, Cedar Falls, Cantwell Cliffs and Rock House. Each area has miles of trails; Ash Cave is totally accessible for those with disabilities.
The best place to start is one of the Hocking County Tourism Association's Regional Welcome Centers. One is in a mid-1800s gristmill at the corner of U.S. Route 33 and Ohio Route 664 in Logan; the other, in a log cabin at the Bowers & Daughters Apple House, is on Ohio Route 56 in western Hocking County. Look for the "Waterfalls and Wildflowers" brochure.
Lodging and dining:
Glenlaurel, A Scottish Country Inn, 14940 Mount Olive Road, Rockbridge, (800) 809-7378, www.glenlaurel.com. Doubles from $149, including breakfast. Gourmet lunch for two, $25. Five-course dinner, $49 per person; seven-course, $59 per person. Reservations required.
Inn & Spa at Cedar Falls, 21190 Ohio Route 374, Logan, (800) 653-2557. www.innatcedarfalls.com. Doubles from $109, including breakfast. Lunch under $10. Dinner entrees from $27.
A Georgian Manner B&B, 29055 Evans Road, off Lake Logan Road, Logan, (800) 606-1840, www.georgianmanner.com. Doubles from $105.
Hocking Hills State Park, 19852 Ohio Route 664 S., Logan, (866) 644-6727, www.ohiostateparks.org. Cabins that sleep six, from $95.
Shaw's Restaurant & Inn, 123 N. Broad St., Lancaster, (800) 654-2477, www.shawsinn.com. Doubles from $89. Lunch entrees under $10. Dinner entrees from $15.
Ravenwood Castle, 65666 Bethel Road, Ohio Route 93, south of Logan in Vinton County, (800) 477-1541, www.ravenwoodcastle.com. A 12th-century Norman castle re-created in rural Ohio. Doubles from $79, including breakfast. Dinner in the Great Hall from $16 per person. Reservations required.
Grouse Nest Restaurant, 25780 Liberty Hill Road, South Bloomingville, (800) 222-4655, www.grousenest.com. Lunch under $10. Dinner entrees from $12.