The weather started out very questionable but ended up being a fantastic day for yet another hike (fourth of ten) in the Cuyahoga Challenge.
This hike was on the Lake Trail (pdf) in the Virginia Kendall Unit (pdf) of the southern part of the Cuyahoga Valley (pdf). We've hiked the Salt Run Trail (to the west) as well as all the trails in the Ledges Area and Octagon Area but not this one, so we were curious to see if the geography would be different.
It didn't start out this way, but today was a great day for a hike.
I'm finding that one of the ways to enjoy these hikes (and not view each one as a "checkbox" on the way to earning the Cuyahoga Challenge) is to keep my eyes open for plants, animals, insects or other interesting things along the way. It's not just about bagging the hike!
Around the dam, we saw lots of milkweed and so got started looking for monarchs.
And there they were! We saw monarch caterpillars and eventually a monarch chrysalis and then another!
One of the nice things about doing these hikes is that we end up doing them together, as a family.
We're planning on splitting up when the adventurers take on the Boston to Pine Lane (8 miles) while the others tackle Langes Run (3.5++ miles) or the Plateau Trail (4.9 miles).
It's been great and we since we're planning on completing the Challenge, we have a few more to go!
On our way through the cattail marsh, we happened upon this moth, one of the Sphingidae.
It's just amazing to have this resource almost in our back yard!
The Lake Trail (approximately 1 mile) (pdf) starts at the Kendall Lake Shelter. It is considered an easy trail.
