Spring blooms at the Cincinnati Nature Center

March 21st: My son Ryan is taking weekend nature classes at the fantastic Cincinnati Nature Center, which we recently joined. This has given me a great chance to explore their many miles of woodland and prairie trails while he’s busy finding out about the wonders of the Ohio woods. The trails here are not technical and are mostly gentle, but there are a couple of seriously challenging ridge climbs that keep things interesting, including the 195 (!) stairs to the top of one ridge.

This is along the “red trail”, which is appropriately named as it quickly makes you red line. Actually, this one is not so bad because the stairs are even. But another, more overgrown climb further along the same ridge is almost as bad as the Stone Steps. This one seems to go on forever.

Luckily, the trails at the top are pretty level and gave me a nice breather. This was a superb run, but still with some swampy sections from recent rains. It gave me some real confidence, as my last outing here was a very tough run that I had to wrap up by walking the last half hour. And the bluebells were out in force, first real signs of spring!