North east ohio Legs Up Travel

 The naturalist at the mentor marsh hold frequent interactive shot family hikes. all the family came on this cold Saturday hike, starting from Morton community park in mentor. We barely walked a few minutes when the guide announced a flower. I looked around and saw none. The guide pointed to a small plant and then showed the flower. I had to get close to. It was sort of dark purple, nearly black and was quite hidden against the muddy ground. it was not a small flower, just well hidden. it is the skunk cabbage. we explored a nearby vernal pool and saw a few tiny species I never knew existed plus a surprised snake. we walked a bit more on this part of the buckeye trail. we examined the marsh and an abandoned bald eagle nest. short hike, with 1 skunky flower. this is fully blooming skunk cabbage! near invisible if you don't know what to look for The vernal pool Marsh over look and the big abandoned Bald eagle nest on the far trees. hard to spot. a bit the the right of the tree gap.

about a decade ago I discovered the ohio buckeye trail and have decided to walk the whole trail, with family. so, with kids, as you can imagine, it is slow progress. the 1st section for me was in south chagrin reservation from the Polo fields all the way to the look about lodge and then walked home. this part of the trail is close to my house. I repeated some portions of this trail over the years and in the right time, it had wild flowers. On a warmish saturday, I took my older boys to explore the trail. We park on the intersection of Miles road and chagrin river road and the trail generally follows the river. the buckeye trail here is wide and has tiny side trail that hug the river, we followed the smaller trail as much as possible. Just as I warn my kids to stay away from the edge, or risk falling the swift and cold river, we spot fisherman, in the water! fishing with no bother. this is a great trail for kids, we had a few breaks to skim stones on the river, and several fallen tree...

upon my landing in Ohio,14 years ago, I found that I miss the wild flowers of my native Israel. Ohio is supremly green, but wild flowers are hard to comeby. so now am hunting the illusive wildflowers. over the years ive seen them, in small batches. you have to know the right time and place. The 1st location of my search was Acacia metro park in Beachwood. This former golf course has lots of open space and water that I found are a necessity for flowers in this evergreen land. Its been some months since my last visit here and renovations are starting. some parts of the park are fensed for purpose unknow. which is a shame since this park has many deer and coyotes( which are extremly rarely seen. the 1 hour walk yielded no flowers on March 31st 2022, but yielded a Bunny, squirrles, geese, quite a few deer and a surprise 1st ever white dear. This park will get wldflowers later in the year... i'l be back