Strait Creek Bluffs Nature Preserve - Day 59

  Today began with quite a surprise. This wasn't in any of the forecasts!

Bill has left, but Nikki planned to hike with us most of the day. She traveled with us to the start, but had to be in a Zoom meeting part of the morning, so she was going to catch us after the road walk part. The snow made the road portion beautiful. Then we entered a section that wasn't off road when I was here before. We headed up from the highway into Strait Creek Bluffs Nature Preserve.

We quickly climbed above the road and could see the creek culvert and valley below us.

For about 2 miles we wandered the bluffs above Strait Creek. It was difficult walking in the snow, with very uneven footing beneath it, but the woods was extremely beautiful. We knew there was a creek ford in our future, but we were prepared. We also tried this a few days ago, but I guess I forgot to put it in the blog. We deployed ultra-strong "flex" trash bags. As long as the rocks aren't too sharp or the creek too wide, they hold up. We got across with dry feet!

Just as we were going up the other side, Nikki was coming down to the creek. So we waited for her to join us. Soon, we were again high above the creek.

We kept climbing, passed some rock cliffs (Peebles Dolomite), and finally reached what I was most excited about-- a "high prairie." There are lots of rare ecosystems in this area. Don't know much about this one, except it has a lot of little bluestem grass. It was gorgeous, ringed with trees and hills frosted with the snow.

After we made it through this nature preserve, we re-assessed the day. Those miles were so wonderful, but they were difficult. The footing was tricky, and we were moving very slowly.

We decided to do a couple of short road walks (Nikki spotted us- she's not crazy about the road walks), and Denali and I will start fresh tomorrow to do the next off-road section because we KNOW it is going to be difficult, and the shortest distance between two places to park is 5 miles. It didn't seem very smart to begin that at 2:30 in the afternoon. So we'll pick that up in the morning. Then we'll decide how long an off-road piece we can tackle after that.

This is the first time on this hike that I've had to shorten the planned miles due to weather. I knew it would probably happen, and there are enough extra days built in that it's fine. It's just one of the chances I had to take by starting in the winter. The fact that I'm almost 2 months into this adventure, and this is the first weather adjustment, seems almost miraculous.

Anyway, we did shorter miles today, but it was SO beautiful that we don't mind at all. We think we made good choices, and we are going to also break tomorrow into shorter segments, so we can reassess mid-day and not be committed to a "death march" in the afternoon.

Here's the joke of the day. A fat tree with a belly button.

Miles today: 11.2. Total miles so far: 835.9.

See Ohio Brush Creek