Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #25
Dublin, OH · Tue, 21 Apr 2026. 4:30pm

Our third of three waterfalls in town today is Indian Run Falls. Actually it's our third and fourth because there are both upper and lower falls on this short trail behind the school in the very bougie Columbus suburb of Dublin, Ohio.

The trail starts two blocks off the downtown strip and winds around behind the ballfields of the local high school. A few teams were out there, practicing, with music playing loudly on a big bluetooth speaker. Surprisingly the music was like a "Greatest Hits of 1980s Rock" channel with Van Halen, Aerosmith, etc. "Hey, it's 80s music!" Hawk said, not particularly loudly from the forest. And all of a sudden it was like, *needle scratch* the music volume got turned way down. 🤣



We stopped first at this cascade falls. ...Well, I stopped first at this falls. Hawk went on ahead.

The trail crosses over a bridge above this falls and doubles back along the opposite side of the canyon.



From the far side were were able to catch a glimpse of the lower falls. It's mostly obscured behind trees and undergrowth. To capture the photo  photo I've included here I had to find just the right spot— safe spot— along the canyon rim and reach up to get a clear view. This isn't really a sit-and-enjoy spot. You can't actually see the falls if you sit. 🤷



We headed back around to the near side of the canyon. This time I got Hawk to explore the upper falls with me. Mostly I did that by going down first and assuring her it was within her current capability range. As you can see in the photo, she walks with a cane. As I noted in another blog recently, strong hiking skills, weak hiking body.

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #23
Dublin, OH · Tue, 21 Apr 2026. 2:30pm

As we wind toward the end of our Ohio waterfalls trip we've planned two nights in Columbus. We drove in yesterday evening after our spur-of-the-moment road trip to Wheeling WV. Tomorrow, we fly home from Columbus airport. But today, we've set aside the whole day for visiting a trio of waterfalls right here in town. First up is Hayden Run Falls.



It's an easy walk to the grotto where Hayden Falls pours over a rocky lip. Stairs lead down from the small parking lot, and a well maintained boardwalk leads into the short canyon. There are signs of there being a trail on the ground in the past.... I'll put in my 2 cents for "Please don't jump the fence and try the dirt path." ...Not because it's dangerous but because it's harmful to the natural environment.



Besides, what you really want to do is spend more time here, at the falls.

Meeting a Single Mother of Twelve

So what's wrong, anyway, with tromping through the mud and undergrowth? Well, you'll make it harder on this single mother of twelve.


Link: Watch video on YouTube

She's got twelve ducklings.

Ducks need the untrampled mud and greenery to nest their eggs and raise their chicks.

Where's the father in all of this? Watch the video, I believe I spotted him some distance away, out drinking with one of his buddies. 🤣

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #18
Rockbridge, OH · Sun, 19 Apr 2026. 3pm

After hiking Ash Cave this morning— for the second time in two days!— we drove north through Hocking Hills State Park to Rock Bridge State Natural Preserve. But first, we stopped for lunch in West Logan for lunch. Yes, we drove right past the pencil sharpener museum along SR 664. We even stopped next to it to grab a fresh map from the visitors center.

I lingered over lunch. What do I want to do today? I fretted. Which was really, what do I have energy for today. I was feeling out of sorts, partly because of medication, but partly also because of lack of motivation today. Though the latter may be driven by the former. 🤷‍♂️ Soon enough I decided, "Fuck it, I'm going hiking," and we drove to Rock Bridge.



The main point of interest on this hike is, well, the thing the park is named for, a natural rock bridge. It's about 10' wide and 60' long.

Geologically, this rock is the familiar Black Hand Sandstone that forms the bedrock layer all around this region. This bridge started out as a cave, similar to Ash Cave or Whispering Cave. A lower sub-layer of the sandstone eroded away faster than the sturdier layer above it, creating an alcove. Eventually this cave got fairly deep... and then fissures in the upper layer caused part of the "roof" to crumble and fall down. The part that didn't crumble is now the bridge.



The trail leads around underneath the near side of the bridge. It's nice in here, being down in this grotto. Though the combination of the dripping water coming over the lip of the cave, plus the now overcast sky above, gives everything a dour mood.

We stayed here for a while, enjoying the fact that we had the place to ourselves. That's a little surprising since it's still a weekend, though I figure what's happening is this little park is waaay less popular with visitors than the well known Hocking Hills nearby. We saw maybe 8 people in 2-3 small groups on the way in and maybe 5 more people on the way out.

As we've walked back to the car now we've decided to call it a day already. We'll blame it on the weather. The sunny sky we enjoyed this morning has turned overcast. And a strong breeze has picked up. Plus, it's chilly today compared to the beautiful weather two days ago. There were points on this hike where I worried the three light layers I'd worn wouldn't be enough. Tomorrow's going to be even colder... but at least it'll be sunny.

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #26
Dublin, OH · Tue, 21 Apr 2026. 7pm

Today was a day of good parts and... not-so-good parts. Before I dwell on the negatives let me hit the high notes: We went on three waterfalls hikes in the area today. They were Hayden Falls, Millikin Falls, and Indian Run Falls. Each was short but relaxing and peaceful for how quickly we could get away from the burgeoning city around us. Oh, and the weather was beautiful. No more "WTF? It's only 43?!" like yesterday. Today it was in the mid-70s. I'm just doing daily updates right now, so I'll come back later and post details— and pictures!— from each of these hikes.

So, what was not-so-good? Mostly that I spent the whole morning not feeling well. First I slept in 'til, like, 9:30. It was late enough that I missed the hotel's breakfast. Not a problem, I figured; I'd just eat one of the various proteins bars I packed on the trip. I carry them both as car/airplane/trail snacks as well as in case any of the hotel breakfasts are unpalatable.But after eating a bar I had a painful knot in my stomach. I don't know if that was something bad about the bar— it's a newer variety I'm trying— or if it was a side effect of Ozempic. I lean toward the latter though it could also be some of the former, as well.

I took it easy in the hotel room until around noon. By then my stomach was feeling better... but I was also hungry. Hawk and I packed our bags for hiking and agreed to stop for some lunch first. We did that, and my stomach felt better after a solid meal. And the morning's rest. I enjoyed those three hikes in the afternoon without further problems.

This evening I've been taking it easy again. No, not because I'm feeling unwell. Hawk is meeting up with a former colleague who lives nearby. I opted out of joining them for dinner so they could dish the gossip. Instead I made a light dinner out of the hors d'oeuvres buffet the hotel offers in the evening and then came back up to the room to veg on the sofa with my computer. It's nice to have some downtime that's not because I'm feeling sick.

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #19
Circleville, OH · Sun, 19 Apr 2026. 10pm

After a couple of hikes today— which I'll catch up on later, per my change of tempo in blogging about this trip— we came back to our hotel in Circleville. Again we called it an early-ish day, tired out from hiking already. But this evening, unlike the past three evenings in Circleville, we were hungry for dinner here. So we checked out local restaurants.

It turns out Circleville is kind of Chicken Wing-ville. Just within 1/2 of our hotel are three restaurants that specialize in chicken wings. We picked the one that's fast food. It was genuinely good, with very tender chicken and lots of sauce options.

Speaking of what you can find when you check a map of the area around our hotel, "Chicken Wing-ville" isn't the only sobriquet you might come up with for Circleville. You could also start wondering if Circleville is actually.... Hitler-ville. Multiple place names in Circleville are Hitler-this or Hitler-that. There's a Hitler Park, a Hitler Pond, and at least one business named for Hitler. These are just what I happened to notice on Google Maps when I was browsing for restaurants nearby.

WTF? I wondered. Did I accidentally book us into a hotbed of racism like when I picked a hotel near the headquarters of an overtly racist, white-supremacist organization in Arkansas?

No! The Circleville Hitlers are the good Hitlers, numerous other blogs tell me. 🤣 It's the name of an influential pioneer family that helped settle this area in the late 1700s and early 1800s— well before the bad Hitler was even born. Example reference: All That's Interesting blog from 2018 (retrieved April 2026).

I get it that a name is just a name, and the good Hitlers had theirs first. But when a name is held by a singularly awful world leader who declared war on democracies around the world and committed the worst genocide of the modern era, it's time to think about changing. Anybody living in the current time line since, say, 1943 should be able to figure this one out. Changing your name is a legitimate choice. Thus not changing a name, particularly not renaming public landmarks and businesses— which are not like asking a person to change the name they and their parents and grandparents were born with— is also a choice.

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #15
Logan, OH · Sat, 18 Apr 2026. 4pm

Did you know there's a pencil sharpener museum? There is, and it's in West Logan, Ohio. Did you know there's a West Logan, Ohio? There is, and it's right next to the Logan, Ohio. Did you know there's a Loga— nevermind, this is getting silly. I didn't know any of this existed until a few weeks ago, when I started looking at where to stay during a visit to Hocking Hills State Park. It popped up on a map when I was looking at hotels and restaurants. Ultimately we chose to stay in Circleville instead but I figured we might visit Logan/West Logan for lunch— which we did just an hour ago— and could visit the pencil sharpener museum on a day when it's too rainy to want to go hiking in the park. Which, this afternoon, it is.



The pencil sharpener museum is both more and less than I expected. More, because it's real and not just some tourist-trap thing that locals shilled Google Maps into featuring prominently. But also less because it's in a shed barely the size of a one-car garage, outside a regional visitors center. And while I thought it might be a historical exhibit about the history of pencil sharpeners and their manufacture, it's 98% just a collection of hundreds, possibly thousands, of mostly cheap-shit pencil sharpeners; mostly cheap, plastic junk from the 1980s that people shoved pencil sharpeners in as gimmicks.

At least it was free.

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #13
Rockbridge, OH · Sat, 18 Apr 2026. 2pm

Three. The number of hikes we could squeeze in today before it started raining on us was three. And this third one, a visit to the falls at Conkle's Hollow, we finished just in time. It started to sprinkle on us during the last minute or two of our trek. By the time we'd shucked our packs into the car and driven back onto the main road, it was pouring.

But about that hike...!

The trail up the gorge starts out easy. Like the Ash Cave trail we hiked earlier today it's flat and paved. It's even touted as being accessible. We even saw two people in wheelchairs/scooters on it. The only problem is....



The full trail is not accessible. It turns a bend where the canyon gets narrow, the pavement ends, and the trail scrambles over rocks and mud. And it's past this breakover point where all the fun stuff is. Sorry, disabled visitors. Disability sucks.

Accessibility is something that stays on our minds because even though neither of us are confined to a wheelchair, Hawk does contend with disability.

It may not seem like she's disabled, but that cane she walks with is not a hiking pole. It's actually a cane. People who see her on the trail often comment, "Oh, that's a nice stick! I should get one like that!" And Hawk scowls at them that it's not a fashion accessory. She's able to do as much hiking as we still do because (a) she's determined and (b) she was a strong, knowledgeable hiker before disability. While her physical abilities are much less than before she still very much knows what she's doing, and that helps her pick her way over obstacles a lot of people wouldn't attempt.

But back to this hike again....

We walked past a mostly dry waterfall in a side canyon. Maybe if we'd waited a few hours (in the pouring rain!) we could've seen nice flow over it. Around another bend from there the trail ends in a grotto. There we did find a flowing waterfall— no waiting!



Once again I was pleasantly surprised with the trail manners of Ohioans. Back in California, at a spot like this with a small waterfall and a pool, there'd be at least 3 people taking freakin' baths in it. Here everyone stayed at a respectful distance and allowed one another to take turns photographing nature undisturbed.



We stayed at the grotto for about 10 minutes, quietly absorbing the ambience. Then we headed back out the trail to the car— arriving, as I noted above, in the nick of time. Rain was merely starting to sprinkle as we walked the last 100 steps to the car. By the time we'd driven even 1/2 mile away it was pouring.

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #11
Hocking Hills State Park · Sat, 18 Apr 2026. 11:45am

This morning we got out early and headed straight to Cedar Creek Falls first thing. Well, "early" is a relative term. I think I got up with my 7:30am alarm, took a drink of water, then went back to bed for 30 more minutes. Then we went downstairs for breakfast and puttered around a bit before getting together our packs for the day and heading out to the car. Add in the 45 minutes to an hour to drive to the trailhead and it was already 10:45 by the time we started hiking.

It's overcast this morning. The forecast shows rain all afternoon and more rain tomorrow. We're trying to squeeze in as many short hikes as possible this morning before the rain hits.



I've got six photos to share from this hike. Rather than flood your reading page I'll put them behind a cut. Here's a selfie at the falls to give you a sense of what's there.

The other 5 photos are not selfies, I promise.

( Read more... )

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #9
Hocking Hills State Park · Fri, 17 Apr 2026. 3:30pm

After assuaging our hunger with a light lunch at the park lodge we set off down the trail to Whispering Cave. And it was down. The first leg of the trail from the lodge involves over 125 stair steps down to the lip of the canyon. Then dozens more steps down onto the benchland.



Here, on the benchland, we're probably 100' above the creek at the bottom of the canyon below. I'm glad we didn't stretch our hike in the gorge to come out here in one go. Though the cost for avoiding that is returning up those 200-ish steps to the lodge on the way out.

In the photo above you see more of the same Black Hand sandstone formation that comprises this gorge. The little ridges and pock marks in the stone come from places where there was a harder mineral that resisted erosion slightly more, forming the little ridges,while softer material underneath eroded away, forming the divots.



There are also a lot of caves in the rock. Here in Ohio "cave" is used liberally. It describes a tightly enclosed area that you could imagine a beast hiding in; and it also describes basically any area where the rock overhangs.

Which one is Whispering Cave? It's the latter, though on a grand scale.



And there's a waterfall pouring over the lip of the cave. It's a bit hard to spot in the photo above because the flow is just a trickle— or about equal to a bathroom shower. Look for the wet area along the rim. Or check this short video I recorded:



After this we retraced our steps to the park lodge. Yes, than meant a lot of literal steps, as in stair steps, at the end. Hawk is feeling beat, and I'm feeling... beat but like maybe I want to squeeze in one more hike, one easy hike, on this beautiful day. We've agreed we'll drive to the next trailhead and decide there.

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #7
Hocking Hills State Park · Fri, 17 Apr 2026. 2pm

We had a great hike today in the gorge at Hocking Hills State Park. After hiking the upper half of the main gorge area (previous blog) we continued on to the lower half. A bailout trail would've let us cut short the hike without doing this other half, but given there are at least three waterfalls worth seeing in the lower half, WTF would anyone want to do that?



This is Lower Falls in the gorge. Like Upper Falls (see previous blog) it pours down into a nice bowl surrounded on three sides by rock walls. It's probably a nice swimming hole. We didn't hop in because we're not the sort to say, "Ooh, a beautiful body of fresh water, let's muddy it up so others can't appreciate its beauty!" I'm thankful that others around us felt the same way... or perhaps felt the temperature was a tad too cool to go swimming. I enjoyed the chance to appreciate seeing the water without the distraction of kids jumping in the water and throwing sticks and stones and trying to murder each other.

Speaking of weather, it's beautiful today. The temperature's in the low 80s, perhaps a bit cooler down here in the gorge by the creek. The next few days look to be rainy and cooler, so we're definitely enjoying it while we can.



At Lower Falls we started hiking a trail up and out of the canyon. The creek trail does continue further downstream, but there's only one other thing nearby we'd want to see. ...And as we got partway up this climb we realized that the side trail we want for it is a smidge further downstream. So we doubled back down these stairs to the creek... though not before appreciating the scene above us.

Yes, that's water pouring over the lip of the canyon way above us. It's about as much as a bathroom shower. I imagine after a rainstorm it flows a lot heavier.

Yes², the canyon rim overhangs this area quite a bit. The trail goes behind the waterfall by at least 20'.

Yes³, that's a spiral staircase at the right edge of the frame. The canyon wall is so high and vertical here (actually it's concave) that the park built a metal staircase to climb us out.

But back to that falls we didn't want to miss....



A bit further down the main creek in the gorge a side creek pours in. There's a metal bridge over the water but no signs. The trail up the tributary is obscured at first, like it hasn't been maintained in a while— intentionally so. We figured where to go based on orienteering skill.

As we climbed the side canyon the trail emerged. It climbed steeply up steps carved into the natural rock. Debris and damage showed that, indeed, this area hasn't been maintained for a while. We scrambled past some fallen rocks and found ourselves right up close to Broken Rock Falls. Yes, the name is quite apropos. And now it comes with more broken rock in every hike. 🤣

From here we continued around a small loop trail mid-way up the canyon wall back toward the cave in the middle picture. It was cool having the perspective of the steep rock wall right next to us. And once we climbed that spiral staircase that wasn't the only oddity on the way out.... There was also a staircase some 60 steps high that ascended through a tunnel! That's one area where I really appreciated that a lot of the trails in this park are one-way and clearly (and repeatedly) marked as such. Navigating tight squeezes like these stairs would be an absolute zoo if people were pushing past each other in both directions.