Heart and Sole

Friday, May 12, 2017

Hiking AEP's Reclaimed land - 25 miles in the woods

Reclaimed land. It was land thoroughly raped by strip-mining, and most of the reclaiming appears to have been done by mother nature. The huge multi-state American Electric Power owns the land, and it is of little use to anybody, so it didn't take much 'altruism' to open the land for what they call ReCreation.

Cynicism aside, the 25 miles of Buckeye Trail through their vast holdings in Noble and Morgan Counties, Ohio was the kind of wild experience that I crave. Before I go into the report of my two days on AEP property I have to make a disclosure.

Just before entering AEP ReCreation Lands from the north, at the town of Belle Valley, the Buckeye Trail splits and offers two routes. The 4600-mile North Country National Scenic Trail (NCT) follows the longer of the routes in order to pick up 32 miles of off-road trail in Wayne National Forest in far SE Ohio. The other route takes the hiker through AEP's 25 miles of off-road trail.

When the North Country Trail chose their route, this AEP trail had not yet been opened, and now that it has, NCT has not chosen to consider a change here.

The problem with the North Country Trail route is that it requires 85 miles of road walking in order to access the Wayne National Forest woods walking. Whereas the AEP route, which is much more direct, involves only 4 miles of road walk before re-connecting with the longer route.

Which would you choose? 117 miles of trail, 85 of which is road walking, or 29 miles of trail to get to the same point, only four of which is road walking?

Sorry, North Country Trail. As is clear from the way I started this post, I chose to forsake you for the shorter route. I've deviated before. On the NCT I'm not striving to be a purist.

And I'm glad I made the choice I did. As a major fan of waterfalls with pure free-fall that you can walk 360 degrees around and stay dry, I found the fifteen-foot-high fall shown as the headline photo to be the highlight of the 25 miles. There was even another waterfall of 25 feet. I could only get a look at the upper part of this one without some serious bushwhacking.

The second distinctive highlight was a half-decent long distance view from the top of an artificial cliff overlooking a strip-mined valley, where the birds were soaring.

Ohio is pretty flat and getting more so as I move farther from the Appalachians, so having waterfalls and viewpoints is becoming more rare and precious all the time.

The third distinction of this AEP property is its multitude of strip-mine ponds.

Typically they are a couple hundred feet wide and as much as a mile long, and there are dozens of them along with hundreds of smaller ones including lots of beaver ponds and wetlands.

Otherwise the woods hiking was of two very different venues. The first was in undisturbed upland woods on ground never mined because the seam of coal was too deeply buried. These sections were pure joy to hike, but probably only consisted of a third of the hiking. The second was on abandoned haul roads that now have wide grassy surfaces and went through young woods re-growing on ground that had been ripped up and moved around. There were a few more open areas where the soil was so poor that their tree planting efforts hadn't taken yet.

But otherwise it was just typical woods walking. When walking along without views or water features, my eyes focus more on the little things.

A mossy log ...

... the colorful wildlife ...

... including a wild turkey egg that had gone astray, perhaps raided by a raccoon ...

... and, of course, the May flowers.

My van has been successfully repaired and the cost was less than I feared. Weather during these two days in the AEP woods was far from ideal, being cloudy much of the time and with way too much wet foliage to trudge through, particularly on Wednesday, after an overnight rain. But these are typical hiker challenges - the spice of life - the price we pay for those moments of pure wonderment and bliss. No complaints.

Below are the screen shots of the GPS tracks overlaid on terrain, where you can see the strip mined areas snaking across the landscape.

And instead of presenting seven different interactive Wikiloc segment maps for these two days of hiking, I'm just presenting the overview map. To see the latest tracks just zoom in on the tail end in Ohio.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Joy, Joy, Joy! The hike beside Wolf Run Lake

Monday I had some payoff for the considerable road walking I've been doing--three miles of pure wild woodland hiking along the west side of Wolf Run Lake.

This was the kind of hiking I crave--evoking that sense of awe and wonder--the feeling that there is no place I would rather be, that I'm undeservedly blessed to be wandering these picturesque woods on such a perfect day.

Hickory leaf buds bursting open - an unexpected splash of spring color

The sky was crystal cerulean blue. The temperature was cool, the humidity low, the breeze light. Birds were singing and nesting and sharing the joy. Wild flowers were gilding the landscape with color.

Once I left the lakeside I had another nice mile of walking a grassy path through savanna-like growth with a few larger trees lending character to the setting.

Then along the road walk I passed the wreck site of the USS Shenandoah--a gigantic Zeppelin Rigid airship, built and owned by the Navy, that broke up in a nasty thunderstorm on the night of September 3, 1925.

Rigid airships hold a special place in my heart. My ancestral lineage on my father's mother's mother's side (surname Bützow) is said to connect with Count von Zeppelin who founded the airship company. We share a common ancestor in Mecklenburg, formerly part of East Germany, back in the twelfth century when families were first adopting surnames, often after their village of origin. The little hamlet of Zepelin is just four miles outside the much larger town of Bützow.

That was my Monday hiking. It was shortened by a serious brake problem with my van. One of the calipers cracked and needed immediate replacement. I was fortunate to be near a fine repair shop in Cambridge, Ohio, and made the appointment for the repair to be done Tuesday starting late in the morning. So, after an even shorter hiking day Tuesday morning, I'm holed up in a motel awaiting the completion of the work.

Tuesday's sun rose clear and bright to reveal a heavy frost. These goats didn't care much.

They were more interested in why I was trekking down their road. I was walking the four miles of road between Wolf Run Lake and the start of a 25 mile uninterrupted woodland trail section in American Electric Power's re-creation lands--reclaimed strip mine property.

The walk featured Ragan's Chapel, site of an infamous Civil War incident centered on a Confederate sympathizer and his Union Army deserter cousin, called the Hoskinsville Rebellion . . .

. . . and a gravel road that they just coated with fresh, wet, gloppy tar. The fenders of the poor vehicles that used that road were hopelessly covered with splattered tar.

Here are the two GPS tracks for Monday and Tuesday, presented both as static screen shots and as interactive maps.

I'm optimistic that the brake repair will be done by late this afternoon and that I'll be able to bask in all-day joy amid Wednesday's forecast beautiful weather - sunny and in the upper 60's F.

Sunday, May 7, 2017

Two Days Hiking past Senecaville Lake

Leaving the public lands of Salt Fork Wildlife Management Area, I found my feet plodding lots of roads. Twenty-five miles covered in two days included less than three miles on off-road foot trail in the woods.

Some of the scenes along the roads were fun. The 'money' shot (above) of Senecaville Lake was taken from the highway where it crosses the dam.

But the foot trail was just 'green tunnel' stuff--fun to be in the wild, but lacking much of photogenic interest. I noted only one sight along the foot trail worth sharing--this rickety old orange-painted Fire Tower.

I happened to run into the owner of the property here. Matt was out turkey hunting. He told me that he wouldn't want to climb that tower. It's been abandoned and neglected for decades. He and I shared a bond, having both lost our fathers in the past year.

The road walks were mostly on quiet roads. More nasty loose dogs than cars. But there were some decent views, enhanced by the cumulus clouds on this breezy cool day.

And there was another quirky old rusting structure. This old oil storage tank on Pipa Road has been converted to an oversize trail marker.

Otherwise the profusion of May flowers got my attention. Here are shots of the wild white hydrangea and of the wetland yellow iris growing in a roadside ditch.

Below are the overview GPS tracks for the two days, followed by the five individual interactive segments generated on Wikiloc.

All of the off road trail is included in the following segment:

The Saturday weather was cloudy and started rainy and ended with some showers, Sunday featured morning sun and a few later afternoon showers, but none of it was more than a slight nuisance. Tomorrow threatens to be in the 30's but my van is doing some worse threatening. I'm afraid my brakes are shot--horrendous noises coming from the right front wheel. So I'm going to a repair shop first thing in the morning and will not be sorry to miss the chill.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Salt Fork Wildlife Management Area - a secret hike

It didn't rain! This must be Camelot. Based on last night's forecast I had expected a washout this morning, but the rain ended as daylight arrived. By afternoon the sun even came out.

I took advantage of the unexpected good fortune and hiked almost fifteen miles today in six segments.

The first segment was through the big Red Hill Farm Wildlife Conservation Area.

It looks like a big working farm, and the hike was all on gravel roads, but there were some nice ponds.

And this entrance gate made of portal stones almost reminded me of stone-age Europe.

I'm always looking for good photogenic old trees. Here's a nice old Cherry.

Next segment was along Tuttle Road. The entire length of the road I was passing cattle farms.

Third segment was quirky Sugartree Road. Even the name is quirky. One resident had decorated a small pond with all sorts of yard art including a life-size sasquatch complete with an Ohio ball cap and inner tube float.

Finally I got into the sprawling Sugar Run Wildlife Management Area, first hiking some forest roads along Sugartree Branch, where they had built multiple wetland impoundments such as this.

Then came the joy of the day--3.3 miles of pure foot-only trail in the woods.

This was very lightly used. This quiet gem in the middle of lots of road walking is a well kept secret.

A foot track caused by trampling was not visible, but apparently they run a tractor/mower through there once a year or so to keep the route cleared. Dogwoods were still blooming but most were past their peak.

There were some surprisingly strenuous short climbs here, and most of the trail followed ridges and high ground, so although the footing was soggy in places, there were no flooded areas to deal with.

The last section was back on woods roads but still in Salt Fork WMA.

Here I came beside the Salt Fork itself, high and muddy from last night's heavy rain.

The headline photo was taken along this segment, and I passed other nice ponds including this one that was choked with vegetation shore to shore.

Two places I passed today had the distinctive noisy buzz of honey bees swarming. With all the wildflowers in bloom it must be the season for spawning new hives. Both places the hives were in Cherry trees which are notoriously hollow as they get older.

Lastly, here's a GPS track map overlaid on the terrain to give you an overview of today's adventures.

Forecast for tomorrow is for cooler but mostly rain free. Watch. It'll probably rain all day.

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