Hiking Highlights - Nature Realm

F. A. Seiberling Nature Realm, Akron, Ohio  11/1/2011

This is a park that we've been to before and it's one of our favorites.  Besides having the most scenic trails, there is an excellent visitor's center with great exhibits, live animals, and a wonderful gift shop.  Part of the reason we came here for our last hike was so that we could go right in and get our hiking sticks when we completed our Hiking Spree.  The weather this day was autumn perfection.

For our final, "hiker's choice" hike, we decided to do both the Cherry Lane and the Fernwood trails.  Here's the Cherry Lane Trail marker.

And here's the trail marker for the Fernwood Trail.

I love this pretty suspension bridge.

Side view of the bridge

That thing in Monkeyman's hands is his homemade bug cage.  He found a wooly bear caterpillar in our yard as we were leaving the house, and he insisted on bringing "his friend" on our hike.

A nice man offered to take our picture for us on the bridge.

Little boy / big tree

 

I love "looking up the big tree" shots.

 

Big, beautiful red-tailed hawk we saw.  It glided right over us before landing in this tree.

Finally - here we are with our hard-earned hiking sticks!  The Metro Park lady asked if I wanted one for Bug too, but I declined because I felt like that would be cheating, since he rode piggyback for most of the hikes.  But I have since changed my mind and plan to go back and get him one because he WAS there for all of the hikes, and I don't want him to have one less shield on his stick than we have.

I forgot to take a pic of ours, but here's what this year's shield looks like.  (Image credit: www.akron.com)  Every year we will earn another shield to add to our sticks.  :)