Hiking - Ellen Elaborates

Best Places to take Kids Hiking around Greene County, OH

June 28, 2021 by Ellen Wood

We love to go exploring around our area with the kids. I get asked a lot where we like to take the kids to hike, so I decided to do a post on the best parks to take kids hiking in Greene County, OH.

I’ll elaborate…

We love to take the kids hiking, mainly short hikes between 2-4 miles. Thankfully, there are quite a few places within 30 minutes of where we live for us to go hiking. Here’s my current list of favorites. I’ll talk about these, then I’ll name a few other parks with fun play areas that we like to go to as well.

Best Hiking with kids in Greene County

The Narrows Reserve
Sweet Arrow Reserve
Sugar Creek Metropark
Siebenthaler Fen
Glen Helen
Bill Yeck Park

The Narrows Reserve

We discovered this park last year. The main parking has a trail that parallels the Little Miami River. It is shaded and fairly flat. There are several other trails, and another parking area has some cages with raptors in them. Here is the map. We love combining the River Loop with the Sugar Bush Loop.

The trail follows the river and has many fun trees to climb and play in.

narrow reserve — The trail follows the river and has many fun trees to climb and play in.

Sweet Arrow Reserve

Sweet Arrow Reserve is a little hard to find in the Sugarcreek/Beavercreek area. The entrance is right around the corner from First Baptist Church Kettering. Our Apple map took us to the wrong place, but Google maps directs you to the right place. This park has many fun trails. You can find the trail map here. From the parking lot, we took the red trail, to the black trail, to the blue trail then back to the parking lot. This way is mostly shaded and has a lot of up and down. There is also a tree that is standing but hollowed out that is fun to stand in and take a picture!

hiking in greene county with kids — **This is just a fun place to hike!**

Sugarcreek Metropark

We love this park. It is about 35 minutes away from our house, but well worth the drive! They have several different loops for you to hike. What I love about this park is that all the trails are marked so well! There is a section with really old oak trees called the Three Sisters. The kids love to go look at them and marvel at how old and gigantic they are. We normally do the 3 mile green trail, but in the fall, the Orange Osage Tunnel Trail is beautiful. On the Green trail, you do cross a few creeks and the kids love to jump in them and get their feet wet!

best hiking in Greene County — **The big tree behind them is one of the Three Sisters.**

**The big tree behind them is one of the Three Sisters.**

Siebenthaler Fen Wetland Boardwalk

This is a bit of a random park we happened to find one day. It is just a one mile boardwalk round trip in a marsh. There is an observation deck that you can climb up to see more of the wetland at the end before you turn around and walk back out. There are benches along the way at various places. It is located just off of Beaver Valley Rd on Fairground Rd in Beavercreek. Here is a good map.

You can often see various small fish swimming in the water off the sides of the boardwalk. It’s easy to just stop here and take a one mile walk whenever we’re near Beavercreek! We actually do it often!

Glen Helen

This is a unique park in Yellow Springs. The trails aren’t marked that well, but they are well traveled so you can find your way pretty easy using the map. You can see the actual “Yellow Spring” as well as a fun little cave called the “Grotto”. They also have a Raptor Center that you can hike to as well and see owls, raptors, and other birds they are rehabilitating. Parking is $5 and you will need to have cash! Here is the map!

Bill Yeck Park

This is a huge park! It has lots of various trails and an awesome playground that is very unique! I suggest entering at the Forest Field entrance. That is the closest entrance to the playground, and you can easily hop on the purple trail to hike which is what we did! We do want to come back and hike the yellow trail that is longer and goes through the woods. This park is in Centerville and is within a mile of Sugarcreek Metropark. Find the map here.

A few others…

We have a few more places we love to take our kids, but I just don’t have time to write about all of them!

John Bryan State Park has wonderful trails and we probably go here the most since it is closest to our house. You can’t go wrong with any trail you do here! It connects with Clifton Gorge which is also awesome.

Cedarville’s Indian Mound Reserve is also a favorite of ours. We hike this often and come here to play in the creek. Find the map here.

Magee Park in Bellbrook has a fun playground and a creek that the kids love to play in. I bring a camp chair and sit in the shade while they splash and catch crawfish!

Morris Reserve near Lower BellBrook Road has some fun trails as well. We did the ones that were in the woods and had shade!

If you’re up for more of a drive, we love the Horseshoe Falls Trail at Caesar Creek State Park. It is about 35 minutes away from us in Cedarville where we live. I blogged about it here. The kids love the swinging bridge and walking through the creek picking up rocks with fossils on the back of them!

Please leave comments with places I am missing! We love exploring our area! I hope you enjoy reading about what I think are the best places to take kids hiking in Greene County, OH!

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in One Day

May 25, 2020May 25, 2020 by Ellen Wood

Last summer we spent a week outside Traverse City while my husband was the preacher at a youth church camp. We decided since we were already so far north, we might as well head up to the Upper Peninsula to see some sights. But, we only had a day! Here is how we went about exploring Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in one day!

I’ll elaborate…

I have to say that the Upper Peninsula is gorgeous. We stopped just before the Mackinac (pronounced like it ends with aw) Bridge to eat a picnic at a park right below the bridge and on the shores of Lake Huron. The kids were fascinated by how huge the bridge is and how Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet right at the bridge.

We rented a cabin on AirBnb in Grand Marais. It is such a cute little town right on the shores of Lake Superior. There are two restaurants and a general store. We enjoyed walking around and seeing beautiful views of Lake Superior. Grand Marais also less than 10 minutes from the eastern portion of Pictured Rocks. After checking into our cute little cabin in the late afternoon, we set off for the Pictured Rocks Grand Sable Visitor Center which was about 10 minutes away. The park ranger directed us to a nearby hiking trail to Sable Falls. This might have been one of our favorites. You walk down 168 steps to see a waterfall. If you keep going about a quarter of a mile, you come out onto a multi colored rock beach with a beautiful view of Lake Superior. The rocks look like they’ve been painted. Going back up the steps was a trek, but we made it!

The next day, we had a lot to accomplish in order to see as much of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in one day as we could! So, after a quick breakfast of cereal bars and fruit, we left the cabin early and headed west to Miner’s Falls. This is a trail of about 1.2 miles to see a waterfall. It’s well worth it and the hike is easy. My four year old had no problems!

Then, we headed west to the main launching town for Pictured Rocks called Munising (which I can’t pronounce right and my family found this hilarious:/). This is where you can catch the boat ride that takes you down to see the rocks. Sadly, as soon as we left, clouds rolled in and it stayed rainy and cloudy the whole time so we didn’t get to see the colors of the rocks in their sunshine glory (google some pics!), but it was still stunning! I had packed lunches and we ate on the boat. When we were done, we meandered through the cute town and ate our first ever meat pasty! It was really good!

From here, we drove about a mile to the main visitor center for Pictured Rocks. The younger two boys turned in their junior ranger books and got their badges! Then, we walked about a quarter of a mile to a waterfall that is directly behind the visitor center.

We drove back east to Miner’s beach and Miner’s Castle. For the beach, we got out and walked and dipped our toes in the water. It was late July and the water was incredibly cold! There were some people swimming though despite 60 degree weather! Then, we headed to Miner’s Castle. It was about a half of a mile down to an overlook. The pictures don’t do it justice. The colors, as you can see below, of the water reminded me of being in the Caribbean! It also has some buildings there with a ranger on duty telling you about the area and wildlife.

The last adventure on our list was hiking 3 miles to see Chapel Falls. This is a really easy hike, mostly level and despite all the walking we had already done, the kids did great! The falls are beautiful and the scenery was equally gorgeous! Thankfully, despite the signs that black bears had been seen by the rangers, we had a bear free adventure! It could be because our crew of 6 is generally loud, but who knows! I wasn’t sad about it!

I’m so glad we decided to head up to the Upper Peninsula, even if we only had a limited amount of time there. It is well worth a trip, and my kids are begging to go back!

Caesar Creek Kid Friendly Hiking Trail

June 24, 2019June 22, 2019 by Ellen Wood

Here is proof that I love my kids. I’ve been going hiking. And, I actually do enjoy it. Mostly.

I’ll elaborate…

This last Saturday, we drove about 35 minutes away to Caesar Creek State Park to do the Horseshoe Falls Trail. I estimate that we did a little over 2.5 miles. When you get close to the falls, there is a big creek bed and the kids had a blast walking on the rocks, getting their feet wet in the creek, and finding lots of rocks with fossils on them. The falls are only about 3 feet high, but sound awesome and look pretty. Then, just a little further on the trail is a suspension bridge that they kids loved jumping on and making it sway back and forth. You can walk along the creek bed in the water up to the bridge or use the trail. The paths are marked well with trail markers and maps or you can print a map from this link for the more detailed trail map and then a larger view here.

To get there from Cedarville, we took 42 North, turned left at the first light in Waynesville, then right on Clarksville, left on Oregonia, and then left into the Wellman Camping area. We should have turned left at the first parking area, but we missed it so we drove down to the boat ramp area which has a huge parking lot. On the opposite side of the boat ramp, there is the entrance to the trail starting at F. It probably added about a third of a mile to our hike. We began at F then went to E, G, B, A where we caught the blue trail and went down to the swinging bridge. On the way back, we circled around on the red trail from E1-C for something different and had gorgeous views of the lake. We definitely want to go back and do some different trails and see the Pioneer Village (not sure what this is but sounds nerdy/fun).

Hooray for making memories. I remember nothing before high school, so maybe they won’t be like me and might remember that their Dad and I weren’t lame and tried to do fun things. Maybe. Fingers Crossed. If not, this blog is my proof:/

The suspension bridge near Horseshoe Falls.