Cuyahoga Valley National Park, near Cleveland, is not one of the NPS’ better known parks. We saw two of its better offerings, Ledges Trail and Brandywine Falls Loop in half a day. Both were pleasant and uncrowded, but not worth packing the kids in a car and singing all the verses of “99 bottles of beer on the wall”.
Of the two, I prefer the Ledges Trail. This is a loop of about two wooded miles, atop and then below the ledges it is named for. There are several opportunities to go into crevices and explore off-trail. Leaving time for exploration you can do the entire trail in under two hours.
There are picnic facilities and what looked like a snack bar nearby, but they were closed when we were there midweek.
The famous “bat cave” (named for bats, not Batman) is now unfortunately gated off for the bats’ protection. There are still enough crevices to explore that the kids will have a good time.
I believe that it isn’t possible to get a “My Mom went to Cuyahoga Valley National Park and all I got was this shirt” shirt. So that’s something.
Daring Dayhikes 