#31 The Buckeye Trail AEP Land near Caldwell

The Buckeye Trail is a 1,444-mile hiking trail and long-distance trail that loops around the state of Ohio. Part of it is on roads and part is on wooded trails. The long-term goal is to have all of the trails relocated to all woodland trails.

Most hikers navigate their way around the Buckeye Trail by using an App called FarOut. The App is free, but access to the Buckeye Trail maps is a one-time $30 fee. Using the App is very helpful because it shows you exactly where you are in real-time, and shows you where you can camp, and where you can obtain supplies and water. Unfortunately, I had to buy the $30 map just for the tiny section we hiked because the All Trails App didn't have it.

It can be a little tricky to find where to access the trail. In a lot of cases, it's just a small gravel parking lot. We entered the trail near Dyes Fork.

Because the trail is a big loop around the entire state, it's not really satisfying to just do an out and back in a small section. For example, we could have entered the trail, hiked 4 miles out, turned around, and hiked four miles back. The better option is to take two cars, drop one off at the finishing point, and drive back to the beginning point with the other car. This way you get 8 miles of the trail hiked with no backtracking.

The Trailhead for the section of the trail near Caldwell Ohio

Take a machete and maybe a chainsaw because this trail is close to straight-up bushwhacking in a lot of places, too many to make it an enjoyable hike. The thorns were so thick we felt like we'd been in a knife fight. We got in about four miles turned around and hiked back out. It just wasn't worth it.

I wanted to like this trail. The idea of being able to do multi-day section hikes all over the state, like our own version of the Appalachian Trail, backpacking through little towns, and finding off-the-beaten-path places to camp, all sounded great. The reality is that the scenery is just not nice enough to put in the effort on the poorly maintained trails, and to go through the hassle of two cars or getting dropped off and picked up. Bill and I agreed that our time would be much better spent doing all the backpacking loops available in the State Parks and National Forests.

gnarled - adjective. Knobby, rough, and twisted, especially with age.

The obligatory fungus on a log shot in the sunlight.

This view was the best scenery the trail had to offer.

No exaggeration, hundreds of fallen trees on this trail. One section alone had twenty-five or more blocking the trail. There appears to be little to no trail maintenance done, which I understand because it is a 1,444-mile course maintained by all volunteers. This was probably one of the better-maintained sections, but it was still pretty rough. You could make the argument that it's worth it if there were a lot of scenic areas to take in, but there really wasn't. This trail at best is a C-.

The trail was hard to stay on. Sections of wide cleared areas would dead end into dense forest, and then we'd have to open the App to figure out where we went off trail and backtrack. 

It was a beautiful, cool clear day. A perfect day to be in the woods, just not these woods!

There was about of mile section that was packed full of Brambles so dense that they made about thirty minutes of the hike pure hell. I got a thorn stuck in my lip that drew blood that I had to actually pull out of my lip, and Bill got a few stuck in his head that drew blood. We had to have each been pricked a hundred or more times in a thirty-minute section.  Backpacking is not for pantywaists, I get it, and I know I sound like a baby, I understand that hiking is about "embracing the suck" adapting, and overcoming. Taking obstacles and challenges head-on, and coming up with a plan b for whatever the trail throws at you, but this trail wasn't challenging as much as it was just annoying, with little to no scenery payoff for your trouble. If this trail was this bad in the late fall, I can only imagine the level of pure suck in summer. 

I found a big chunk of fresh moss on the ground that looked like a toupee, so...

There were a lot of fallen trees blocking the trail.

The best part of our hike was unexpectedly running into a couple of experienced Buckeye Trail hikers on the trail, one had done 600 miles on the BT.

It's very uncommon to see anyone else on a trail like this, much less two women hikers. Maybe these women know something about the Buckeye Trail that I missed, but I'd rather put the time, effort, and money into the more enjoyable trails that Ohio has to offer.

We found what looked like a big clump of concrete in the dried-up creek bed. Upon closer inspection, it was actually a big deposit of natural clay. I thought it would be fun to form it into a big phallus for other hikers to discover, but it would have taken too much time and used up all of our water.

A dried-up creek bed. There really wasn't much in the way of scenery on this trail, my clay phallus could have been the most notable thing on this entire trail for someone.

The trail went right through a muddy swamp. If we had attempted this in the spring, or after a heavy rain, this section of the trail would have been impossible

A Pileated Woodpecker's work.

I'm happy this one is done and I can go back to Nature Preserves and State Parks!