We are at Lake Hope State park which is west of Athens and is in the Hocking Hills area. We arrived friday night after about a 3 hour drive, traveling route 56 out of Urbana almost all the way with a lot of twisty turns and hills. The last 25 miles were really twisty with average speed probably 30 mph with towing the car. Being the last official weekend of the summer all the parks are full but yet there are a few spots here but most are tent sites. Being in southern Ohio this area was known for their production of iron and in this park is one of 69 furnaces, all the materials need to create iron were in this area but the need for wood to make charcoal required 300-400 acres of trees a year and the area was nearly stripped clean of growth. These furnaces were critical to the civil war as the iron was used to make cannons and balls. Later better and more abundant materials were discovered further east and these furnaces became obsolete. The interesting thing was that back then this was a company owned area and all the workers were paid in worthless script that could only be used in the company store to purchase overpriced goods keeping the workers here as they had no money to travel elsewhere since the script was no good anywhere else. In an ironic way it was like white slavery.
Earlier saturday went headed for the Hocking Hills parks, there are 9 in this area and our first stop was Ash Cave. Hard to believe we have such beautiful natural wonders in this state. Ash Cave is basically just a sandstone wall that water eroded away and created a shelf.
Next was Cedar Creek, of course as mentioned the dry weather has curtailed the abundance of water for the creeks so as a "Falls" this was a little less than impressive. :) The landscape is stunning though and when this falls is running full bore it would be quite the spectacle.
Yeah that dribble you see is Cedar Falls.
Next on the list is Old Mans Cave State Park, once again this is a large sandstone cavern created by water over centuries, it got its name from an old man who made this home back in the earlier 1800's, from the cave one way you can hike to the. "Lower Falls" .......comeon now you suckered us once on this, lol, we walked part way and called it quits then headed back towards the visitor but opting to take the opposite side of the creek.
Fuzzy because the exposure was so long i couldnt hold the camera still but you get the jest of it, its a tunnel through the rock to continue on the path.
Then we came across this cool picture of tree roots trying to hold on to the rock to survive and keep from falling over
Yeah, we fell for it again and hiked to the "Upper Falls" ;-p
But there was this cool rock cut from the creek. 
Above shot is called the "Devils Bathtub"
Then we stopped at a State Forrest repelling and rock climbing area and by now we are shot from all the hiking so we didn't make it back but got this shot of a tree tree stump a beaver had been working on and they must have cut it down so they could control where it fell.
Today its off for a little more hiking at the "Rock House"
