Skip to main content

Great Lakes Road Trip Day 11; Cuyahoga Valley National Park and the weirdness of US 223

By

The reason I swung all the way over to Cleveland was to visit some family that was moving to Florida in the following week and to cash in some hotel reward points to get another National Park in with Cuyahoga Valley.  I visited Cuyahoga Valley back in 2014 and found it to be worth another look, especially considering it really wasn't far from Chicago.  I made way up I-271 to OH 176 and took Wheatley Road into the park proper.




I stopped at the Everett Covered Bridge which to my understanding was recently rebuilt but may have been constructed in the 1860s.  My understanding is that there were hundreds of covered bridges in the Cleveland area and the Everett Bridge is the only one left in Summit County.  Everett Road now swings around the covered bridge and the portion which became Oak Hill Road seems to be undergoing to construction.




At the junction of Everett Road and Riverview Road is the village of Everett.  I don't know when Everett was founded but I do know it had postal service in the early 1880s through the 1950s and is located next to the ruins of the Ohio and Erie Canal.



Things were a little foggy on the Cuyahoga River given it was an early morning in the high 40s.  I actually encountered temperatures in the 30s north of Duluth a few days prior, odd to see lows like that in August.


I did a good three miles of trail running out in the Ritchie Ledges which are a series of sheer granite rock faces.  Apparently, the Ice Box Cave was closed off because of white nose disease.  I had to use the Octagon Parking lot since the Ledge overlook parking was shut down, I can't figure out why on NPS.gov.










I next stopped at Brandywine Falls which is an 86-foot drop on Brandywine Creek.  Apparently, people have been actually trying to climb the falls given the low water volume and someone "may" have actually been killed from how Park Service warning reads.



Nearby the falls there is a bike bridge that offers decent views of I-271.  Apparently, Old OH 8 is shut down for a bridge failure or reconstruction project, I don't know the exact details.



I next visited Boston Mills which was settled in the 1820s following the completion of the Ohio and Erie Canal which partially ran along the Cuyahoga River.  The town was the site of a sawmill that opened in the 1840s and apparently had a peak population of about 300.  Boston Mills has had railroads in the area since the 1880s and my understanding is that the gas station is from the mid-20th century.  There is a decent view of I-271 and I-80 meeting at the Cuyahoga River which can be seen from the parking lot.














I took OH 21 to reach I-80 and the Ohio Turnpike, had no intention of staying on it very long given the obvious speed traps in the construction zones from the day prior.  I stopped at a plaza to grab some food and found what is probably the most pandering road sign I've ever seen which says, "Slow Down My Mommy Works Here!"   I guess signs like that are supposed to tug at the heart strings? 



I took OH 57 up to OH 2 and followed it west along Lake Erie to Toledo and I-280.  I used to prefer OH 2 to the Turnpike given the traffic volume always seemed lower.  Really the traffic dropped off the map after the exits for Sandusky and Cedar Point.




I used I-280 to cross the Maumee River on the newer bridge then I-75 and I-475 to reach US 23 approaching the Michigan State Line.





The primary attraction of using US 23 was to spot the multiplex of US 223 which begins suddenly right over the Ohio State line.  There was even a reassurance shield announcing the presence of US 223 right before the Pure Michigan sign.


Michigan really de-emphasizes US 223 before it exits off of US 23 onto its own alignment five miles into the state.




Essentially US 223 is multiplexed on US 23 into Ohio so it can remain a signed US Route.  Currently AASHTO standards call for any intrastate US Route less than 300 miles to be deleted within a reasonable amount of time, presently US 223 is only 46.34 miles long.  Originally when US 223 was created in 1930 it ended in downtown Toledo.  Really USends covers the topic in far greater detail than I can, but the situation allowing US 223 to still exist is strange:

USends on Toledo endpoints

USends on US 223

I took US 23 north all the way to Brighton to close the day out and the round trip of the Great Lakes Region.  My circuit of the Great Lakes was about 2,721 miles in total which was a little more than I planned.  I generally try to cap my big road trips somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,500 miles in segments of 300-400 miles a day.  Things went pretty much to plan, and it gave me some extra time in Michigan for a couple days.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2018 Mojave Road Trip Part 2; The deadly desert highway (California State Route 127 and Nevada State Route 373)

By
After leaving Barstow via Old Highway 58 my next destination was in Death Valley.  To access Death Valley from rural San Bernardino County required a trek on north on Interstate 15 to California State Route 127 which becomes Nevada State Route 373 at the state line. Along I-15 I encountered the road sign oddity that is Zzyzx Road about eight miles south of Baker.   Zzyzx Road is a four mile road that used to go to the Zzyzx Mineral Springs and Health Spa.   The spa was founded in the 1940s and the owner made up the name "Zzyzx" to claim it was the last word in the English Language.  The spa has been shut down since the 1970s and is now part of a Desert Studies Center for California State University. The southern terminus of CA 127 in Baker is located at I-15 exit 246.  CA 127 is a 91 mile north/south highway which runs to the Nevada State Line in Inyo County.  CA 127 is called Death Valley Road from I-15 northward.  South of CA 127 ...
4 comments
Read more

Finding the Pre-Emption Road of New York State

By
  The Pre-Emption Road (or rather a series of roads named Pre-Emption Road) follows a survey line called the Pre-Emption Line, drawn in the early days of the United States. The story begins with Massachusetts and New York having competing land claims to modern day Western New York State that have their roots in colonial charters granted by the British. After the Revolutionary War ended, this land became the frontier of the nation and its settlement became a priority for the new American government. During this era, there were a lot of competing land claims that needed to be settled. It was no different with the land claims between New York State and Massachusetts. On November 30, 1786, Massachusetts and New York sent representatives to Hartford, Connecticut to resolve their competing land claims. In less than three weeks, the representatives had reached a compromise. Massachusetts would receive pre-emption rights, meaning the right to sell the land after the Indian title ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What's In a Name?: When the Roads Really Do Tell a Story

By
  Our tagline on the Gribblenation blog is "because every road tells a story". Some roads tell different stories than others. Along our travels, we may see historic markers that tell us a little story about the roads we travel or the places we pass by. Some historic markers are more general, as to telling us who lived where or what old trail traversed between two towns. During my travels across New York State and other states or provinces, I pass by many historic markers, some with interesting or amusing references to roads. I wanted to highlight a few of the markers I've seen along my travels around the Empire State and help tell their stories. Those stories may be as specific as explaining the tales of a tree that was used to help measure a distance of eight miles from Bath to Avoca in Steuben County, as referenced on the Eight Mile Tree historical marker above. They may also help point the way along historical roads first used centuries ago, or may help tell a local l...
Post a Comment
Read more