American Discovery Trail: East Branch Church Road, Ohio

Of the 68 segments of the American Discovery Trail, the shortest one is the 15.5-mile hike I just finished from Chesterhill, Ohio to East Branch Church Road. I will be in Ohio for 480 more miles, three more months at the rate I am going.

The description of this segment is as short as the segment is, but they do mention Wolf Creek Wildlife Area, which is pictured here.

Our location now is about 40 miles from Columbus, East and South of the city, though our route will not take as far north as the capital. From here we go south and west toward Cincinnati.

 

American Discovery Trail: Starting Across Ohio

My progress in February has been unimpressive due to a bridge tournament followed by a short illness, and another tournament is coming next week. Nevertheless, I am two miles from the end of the first Ohio segment, which takes us past Veto Lake (the nice picture here), Vincent, Layman, and on to Chesterhill.

Today, I logged more than 15,000 steps, most of them with Joel, for my best day this month. I have walked over 1.4 million steps and over 630 miles since I started on the Atlantic Coast.

Vincent, Ohio is a census-designated place, population 273. The tiny places I walk through are a sort of running joke on this blog, but I suppose that if you are walking across the United States, going through a place like Vincent makes for a nicer hike than, say, walking through Cleveland.

Layman, Ohio is an unincorporated community, which appears to mean that it is a spot on the map, not necessarily a collection of buildings. The way it looks on Google Maps, you could walk through Layman and literally not realize that you had visited a place with a name. The Internet does not list any population.

I did not find any good pictures of Layman, so this picture is baobab trees in Madagascar.

Wikipedia calls Chesterhill a village of 276 people, so one small family bigger than Vincent. The American Discovery Trail website refers to Chesterhill as both " Chesterhill" and "Chester Hill", but Chesterhill is correct.

American Discovery Trail: Ohio

Yesterday, I finished the ninth leg of the American Discovery Trail - only 59 more to go! - and made it to Ohio. I was getting a little tired of West Virginia, so Ohio is good. I have now walked just over 600 miles, and I walked across the bridge pictured here, I think, to cross the Ohio River from West Virginia.

I will be in Ohio a long time, as the ADT covers 524 miles in Ohio before it gets to Indiana, which is precisely twice the distance that Google Maps says would get me to the same endpoint if I walked a more efficient route. So the path across Ohio is very winding, running along the south of the state near the Kentucky border, and the trail actually includes a little side trip to Kentucky that is really just a walk across a bridge and back at Cincinnati.

I took a few days off and went to play bridge in Oregon over the weekend, so my progress has been slow. This year I have resolved to play in some tournaments, so there will be more of that. My partner Russ and I did really well in the Oregon tournament, our first ever, so that was fun.

To get to Ohio, the ADT website suggests that I should first take a sternwheeler to Blennerhassett Island, a long, thin island in the middle of the Ohio River between West Virginia and Ohio, though the island is considered part of West Virginia.

The mansion on Blennerhassett Island was built by Harman Blennerhassett. The original building burned to the ground in 1811, so this is a picture of a replica built in the 1980s.