http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW Travels and Journeys... Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:00:26 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 2006-2010 heather@heatherdugan.com (Heather Dugan) heather@heatherdugan.com (Heather Dugan) posts 1440 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/powered_by_podpress.jpg http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW 144 144 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/?feed=podcast Footsteps Travels and Journeys... Travel, outdoors, adventure, Heather, Dugan, stories Heather Dugan Heather Dugan heather@heatherdugan.com no no http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/08/26/cracker-barrel-cow/ http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/08/26/cracker-barrel-cow/#comments Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:16:11 +0000 Heather Dugan http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/?p=5869 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/08/26/cracker-barrel-cow/feed/ 3 2:26 Sometimes a day becomes memorable simply by virtue of the degree to which it has veered off its planned course.  Last Saturday was one of ... Sometimes a day becomes memorable simply by virtue of the degree to which it has veered off its planned course.  Last Saturday was one of those days. Our original aim was to ride the Kokosing Trail near Mt Vernon, Ohio, a particular favorite of mine.  Insistent storms downsized that idea to a hike.  With GPS on our phones we didn't need more than a general direction, so we simply headed east hoping to beat the storm front. We finally found blue blazed trees marking The Buckeye Trail inside of Salt Fork State Park, decided to ignore some sporadic raindrops and began following the marked trees down a rather nondescript road.  That was as challenging as it got, however.  We soon decided that Salt Fork was better for boating and golfing than for hiking.  Additionally, the occasional drips were revealed as excellent foreshadowing when clouds rolled in, opened wide and let loose with a pelting downpour.  We were soon drenched to the point I was wringing out my jacket sleeves as we walked and struggling to see past the streams of water running down my face. But, it was fun in that defining sort of way that quirky experiences often are.  And, ironic to remember how completely dry I'd been in a Puerto Rican rainforest just two weeks before! The next memory maker occurred as we cruised, still dripping Ohio rain, into the parking lot of a nearby Cracker Barrel restaurant. A disgruntled cow trotted up, passed the genteel rockers filling the restaurant's front porch and, pausing only to stare down my friend through his driver's side window, sauntered on, aiming itself toward a BP Oil station up the hill. It took several seconds for the cow's presence to even register as out of the ordinary as  I had become quite accustomed to wild horses, dogs and chickens popping out of roadside foliage on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico.  This cow, however, was touring hotel, restaurant and convenience store parking lots near an interstate freeway.  It mooed periodically, apparently unhappy with its growing following of amused bystanders and, eventually, three police squad cars. It finally gained privacy on a hillside of bushes, leaving me with a few questions, some odd video and a renewed appreciation of how much better we remember the days that don't go as planned. Cambridge Vacations Better to Laugh..., Hiking, Salt Fork State Park Heather Dugan no no http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/08/06/in-town-tourist-splashing-at-the-farm/ http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/08/06/in-town-tourist-splashing-at-the-farm/#comments Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:00:54 +0000 Heather Dugan http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/?p=5563 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/08/06/in-town-tourist-splashing-at-the-farm/feed/ 4 0:38 Bridges, stream side trails, waterfalls: these are the elements that add fun to the merely beautiful.  Inniswood Metro Park has all of these as ... Bridges, stream side trails, waterfalls: these are the elements that add fun to the merely beautiful.  Inniswood Metro Park has all of these as well as a farmyard water wheel and trough that are pure cooling recreation.  The truth is that none of us really outgrow the need to splash in water on a hot day.  Sultry summer weather = a beach vacation for many. We may have to settle for a fast fan or air conditioned office, but given the choice, I think most of us prefer to lean a little closer into a cooling spray. Inniswood Metro Park Heather Dugan no no http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/07/30/just-add-water/ http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/07/30/just-add-water/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:27:31 +0000 Heather Dugan http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/?p=5559 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/07/30/just-add-water/feed/ 5 1:11 Cooling down at Inniswood Metro Park Invariably, water is always the game changer.  The deciding factor.  The extra plus weighted into ... Cooling down at Inniswood Metro Park Invariably, water is always the game changer.  The deciding factor.  The extra plus weighted into the yes column.  Almost any park or outdoor venue can be a good destination for my kids, but when you add water?  It becomes the better choice. Our favorite hikes in southern Utah a couple of summers ago were the wet hikes.  Edging carefully up slate waterfalls and through canyon streams, swimming along the way in natural pools... those moist moments elevated extraordinary scenery into extraordinary experiences that grew us in new and delightfully freeing ways.  A shameless wordsmith might say that they saturated us with remarkable memories. Even in frigid winter, we're drawn to the frozen falls and iced over trails of the Hocking Hills in southern Ohio.  Maybe it's that changeable aspect of water that invites us closer.  It's duality fascinates us.   Eroding and building.  Freezing and thawing.  Ebbing and flowing. Changing the earth, changing itself.  All the while sending leaves, logs and rocks on whimsical journeys... Hocking Hills State Park, Inniswood Metro Park, Utah Heather Dugan no no http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/07/19/in-town-tourist-swimming-beach-at-hoover-reservoir-video/ http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/07/19/in-town-tourist-swimming-beach-at-hoover-reservoir-video/#comments Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:21:10 +0000 Heather Dugan http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/?p=5482 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/07/19/in-town-tourist-swimming-beach-at-hoover-reservoir-video/feed/ 5 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/07/14/in-town-tourist-inniswood-metro-park/ http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/07/14/in-town-tourist-inniswood-metro-park/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:45:05 +0000 Heather Dugan http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/?p=5371 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/07/14/in-town-tourist-inniswood-metro-park/feed/ 10 2:00 "This is one of the regular parks?"  My daughter Hannah knows most of our area parks for their running trails and frisbee golf courses.  While ... "This is one of the regular parks?"  My daughter Hannah knows most of our area parks for their running trails and frisbee golf courses.  While we've wandered through Inniswood Metro Park many times, this was the first time my daughter had noticed metro on the entrance sign. Most of our area parks here in central Ohio are geared to recreational activity:  hiking, running, biking, birdwatching, fishing and canoeing or kayaking.  Inniswood by contrast, sprawls with cultivated gardens, lush expanses of lawn and woods, and contains kid-friendly creative content such as a "secret garden", a farm (with a watering trough to splash around in) and a tree house playground.  I always support our park funding at election time, and Inniswood is an inspiring example of tax dollars well spent. A favored local destination, Inniswood's nooks and niches have been the focus of many an afternoon's exploration for us.  A few years ago my youngest son and I found some thrills catching and releasing frogs in one of the Inniswood ponds (until management posted a sign expressly forbidding the activity, oops...).  The secret garden, a quiet stone ruins splayed by twining vines and embedded with jeweled marbles, elicits both romance and mystery.  A story walk maze draws visitors from sentence to sentence, tile to tile, reading and walking to the legend's end: a statue depiction of the story's main characters.  The tree house playground includes an elevated walkway with swaying bridges and, of course, a tree house for children and very small(!) adults to explore. Always familiar but ever changing from one season's colors into the next, Inniswood Metro Park is a  year round festival of nature.  There's nothing regular about it at all. Coming up:  Kid friendly fun at Inniswood, Drifting down the Colorado River in Glen Canyon, Boston, Frank Lloyd Wright designs in Ohio... Inniswood Metro Park, Ohio Heather Dugan no no http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/04/13/in-town-tourist-bald-eagles-at-highbanks/ http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/04/13/in-town-tourist-bald-eagles-at-highbanks/#comments Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:23:26 +0000 Heather Dugan http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/?p=4606 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/04/13/in-town-tourist-bald-eagles-at-highbanks/feed/ 3 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/04/01/goodbyes-in-van-wert/ http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/04/01/goodbyes-in-van-wert/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:06:33 +0000 Heather Dugan http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/?p=4467 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/04/01/goodbyes-in-van-wert/feed/ 8 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/03/18/roll-back-the-roof/ http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/03/18/roll-back-the-roof/#comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:47:50 +0000 Heather Dugan http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/?p=4191 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/03/18/roll-back-the-roof/feed/ 5 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/03/14/springs-soft-opening/ http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/03/14/springs-soft-opening/#comments Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:15:58 +0000 Heather Dugan http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/?p=4313 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/03/14/springs-soft-opening/feed/ 4 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/03/12/sea-of-glass/ http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/03/12/sea-of-glass/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:58:16 +0000 Heather Dugan http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/?p=4278 http://www.heatherdugan.com/blogNEW/2010/03/12/sea-of-glass/feed/ 3