Day 4: Hocking Hills State Park, OH

Today was a relaxing day for us with no driving or moving cities. We adventured out for our first (of a great many) hike(s) of the trip. Directly from our campsite we hiked a 9.4 km loop to visit Old Man’s Cave and Whispering Cave. These were cliff overhangs with giant recesses underneath. Old Man’s Cave was the living place of hermit Richard Rowe in 1796. Whispering Cave has been used as a temporary shelter by many different Indigenous groups over the years including the Shawnee, Delaware and Wyandot tribes, most recently.

After a lunch of jumbo hotdogs, we did a quick trip into town for fishing bait (apparently minnows and wax worms are the flavour of day around here) and to check out a local antique shop (really expensive). Daddy and Seamus tried fishing at the campground’s lake and saw some fish but haven’t landed any yet.

Tonight was time for a lesson on the art of swinging, a bonfire, and s’mores making using Liam’s fancy new s’mores maker. Apparently it makes the best s’mores ever.

Day 3: Mansfield to Hocking Hills State Park, OH

With a free morning in our itinerary, we decided to check out the nearby Malabar Farm State Park’s trout pond. Despite the pond being stocked with trout just this morning and many of the old timers pulling out fish after fish, we had no luck catching anything except seaweed. They must not like our Ontario technique!

We did get to pet a cute pony on the farm though and that made the excursion totally worth it.

Our afternoon was spent exploring the Ohio State Reformatory, previously a prison and now a museum. It was very creepy and we agreed unanimously that it would have been a pretty awful place to live (even during the Great Depression). The Reformatory was the site were the movie the Shawshank Redemption was filmed. We did recognize several parts of the building and thoroughly enjoyed our Behind the Bars tour where we got to see the original hospital wing, experience solitary confinement and climb a guard tower.

Tonight we are sleeping at Hocking Hills State Park. It was a bit of an adventure driving here with Google taking us literally through a cemetery and on some very narrow, very windy back roads. But we arrived in one piece and Seamus BBQ’d us some well deserved supper.