cuyahoga valley national park

It's spring break, y'all! With all the house stuff going on, we weren't going to go anywhere this year, but a couple weeks ago, on a whim, we decided to look to see what the closest national park is. Turns out, it's right next door in Ohio! So for the boys' last few days of freedom, we decided to head east to explore Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

We weren't sure what to expect since the park winds its way through urban areas from Cleveland to Akron, but we were VERY pleasantly surprised. Our first stop this morning was Brandywine Falls, which was pretty impressive:

Next, we took a trail down a hill to see Blue Hen Falls, which was less impressive but still beautiful. As we were getting ready to head back up the trail, we noticed that Henry wasn't with us.

"Henry, time to go! Get away from the edge."

"But I'm taking a selfie!"

"Come on, Henry."

"Just one more try ... got it! A selfie of me licking a waterfall."

THIS KID.

Our next stop was the Ledges area of the park, which is just what you think it might be: giant rock ledges over the valley. There were crevasses aplenty for the kids to climb on, and many, many opportunities for us to yell "BE CAREFUL" and "GET AWAY FROM THAT EDGE BEFORE YOU FALL OFF THE CLIFF." You know — just the way we like it. The boys also mysteriously decided that they would like to be koalas/tree huggers for the day. I don't even know. Luckily, that impulse ended once one of them got scraped trying to slide down a tree trunk. Not-so-smooth move.

On our way back from the Ledges, we stopped along the side of the road because we had read that there was a heronry. And sure enough, we got our first sightings of great blue herons in nesting season. There were so many! It was really amazing. We also were befriended by a lady with a cocker spaniel who gave us a tip to go to the Beaver Marsh next, so that's what we did.

The Beaver Marsh area is basically a long boardwalk that goes along the river and through interesting areas. We saw lots of red-winged blackbirds, a couple of woodpeckers, ducks, and even a muskrat (yuck!) swimming along. But the highlight was a great blue heron that stood just a couple feet off the boardwalk, basically posing for pictures. We stood there snapping away, then Liam, from up the boardwalk, realized that something interesting was going on, so he charged back down to see, startling the bird, which FLEW RIGHT IN FRONT OF US only to land on the other side of the boardwalk and commence posing again. What a show!

We topped off our full day in the park by heading to my Aunt Dana and Uncle Brian's house for dinner. It was great fun. Dana made chili with unexpected ingredients that somehow worked (raisins! pecans! other things I didn't really ask about!), and the boys had fun hanging out with their cousin Aidan. We probably stayed too late, but that's what happens when the conversation is interesting.