Cruising the Cuyahoga

Friday night was rainy - lots of rain - no floods but very very wet. The kind of rain that sounds nice outside the window when you’re sleeping.

Saturday Nicki was working around the house while I tried to rebuild a computer cart load of laptops - mostly dealing with cranky batteries. To get out of town we took our aging vacuum cleaner into the Oreck store for a $15 repair which made it good as new. And then back home to watch the Indians win again.

Sunday was church for Nicki and more school tech work for me. And then we traveled about 60 miles east to Eldon Russell Park which is a very quiet county park along the Upper Cuyahoga River (yes, the same river that eventually flows through the City of Cleveland and into Lake Eire). I think I had elevated expectations for the Cuyahoga. It is a “state-designated Scenic River” and is very natural looking. It is a slow flowing river so we first heading upstream. Every hundred yards or so we’d find a fallen tree partially blocking the path so we’d have a maneuvering challenge. After a half-mile or so we gave up - not so much from the obstructions as from the hunter’s shotgun we could hear getting closer.

Going downstream from the park also had challenging trees and semi-obstructions but we kept seeing a bend ahead that promised a potential natural wonder. There was one Great Blue Heron that we spooked out of the shore grasses and that flew ahead to lure us further on our journey. However, the threat of dusk finally made us do a u-turn and we headed back to the launch site, loaded up, and headed home. We did see a couple turtles but again we’ve found little comparison to our local Findley Lake. There just wasn’t much sign of wildlife - not even much in the way of jumping fish. There are a couple lakes in the same area of the Upper Cuyahoga that we’ll try another day. We’ll keep exploring. Given how the days are getting shorter we may need to reserve kayaking to weekends. Though we may try to get out quickly after work one day this week.