by Elsa Johnson

Parks play an important role in greening a metropolitan area—including the parks that are not actually within the city itself. Cleveland is lucky to have an especially rich park system close in.  But Cleveland area people often miss some cool parks that are a little further out —  close by but not real close by – and a bit harder to get to. From the eastside. It’s easy to get to Holden Arboretum; the Lake County parks that are close by Holden are hard to miss and draw a lot of visitors – like Penitentiary Glen. But way out on the farthest fringes of Lake County there are a collection of not so easy to find parks with some unique features. As a long-practicing landscape designer I have often gone to Klyn Nursery. It was easy to get to Klyn’s via Route 90 and Vrooman Road. When I would get to the bottom of the hill on Vrooman, before it passed over the bridge crossing the Grand River, I would notice a gravel and dirt road that turned right and wandered off ….somewhere.  The road less traveled.  It always intimidated me a little bit, looking  isolated and rough, as it did, and I was on my ‘getting plants’ mission anyway. So I’d pass it by. Then they (the ubiquitous ‘they’) closed the Vrooman Road bridge. So I found myself looking for other ways to get to Klyn’s, and began exploring the back roads, and In doing so I discovered a trio of interesting parks.

I’ve written before, I believe, about Indian Point Park, which is where you find yourself if you if you take that road less traveled. Paine Creek, a small tributary stream to the Grand River, enters that larger flow at Indian Point. Yes, there’s a real legitimate reason it is called Indian Point, and you can discover it via the Lake county Parks website. You can climb up to the top of the point for a view out over the Grand, an Ohio Wild and Scenic River. In the springtime the forest floor here is covered in Virginia bluebells; and in a few weeks there will be glorious fall color. Then, were you a duck you could swim or waddle up Paine Creek, pass under the I-90 freeway, and, not too much further on, arrive at Paine Falls Park. But if you are human, you will have to use your phone navigator or an old fashioned map and zig here and then zag there. The duck will arrive first.

From Paine Falls Park, if you are a duck, having flown to the top of the falls, you will continue up the Paine Creek stream and soon arrive at Hell Hollow Wilderness Area. But if you are human, you’ll get in your car and zig and zag again, and eventually, with luck, find yourself at the same place, but at the top rim of the hollow rather than down in the bottom with the duck.

The charm of the Paine Creek parks and the Hell Hollow Wilderness Area is not to be found in a long hike – there are no long trails – rather, the charm lies in the intimate exploration of Paine Creek (even though you’re not a duck, you get to play in the water). But at Hell Hollow, before you do that, you have to walk down two hundred and sixty three steps (remembering that what goes down must come back up again).

There are great views from the rim trail out over the hollow to the creek below.

The creek bed is shale, not mud, and on a warm summer or early fall day, with the water low, wearing water sneakers, we walked both along and in the water, feeling like explorers, noticing the creek side vegetation (knotweed even here!) and the tiny darters dashing from one sheltering stone to another. Nowhere was the water higher than my ankles.  A young naturalist we came across in the stream showed us a crayfish he held in his fingers, a sign of the unpolluted quality of the water.

I should note that in higher and colder water this watery exploration probably would not be a good or safe idea.

These three destinations put together would make a nice day trip for a city dweller, or someone looking for a little adventure, although I find myself wishing that somehow these three parks, so well connected by nature, were better connected by and for people, so that one could explore them as a continuous hike.

Perhaps someday.