Cuyahoga Valley National Park is sort of the reason we have Earth Day. In 1969 the Cuyahoga River was badly polluted because of steel mills and other manufacturing industries pouring whatever into it. It was so polluted that river workers planned a trip to the hospital if they fell in the water.

Then on June 22 of that year, because it was covered in oil slicks, the river caught on fire. It wasn’t the first time the river caught on fire, but it was the first time major media outlets published the story. And ten months later, to the day, April 22, 1970, we had the first earth day as a result.

I didn’t visit the river. This is the Ledges Trail, a loop that runs along some ancient layered sandstone.
It was very cool. The rocks were green and orange and had pits in them (from where the sandstone mixed with other stuff). There was a thin layer of dirt on top of the rocks where the trees were having to get creative with their root systems.
This is Kendall Lake, in the Virginia Kendall section of the park (a preexisting conservation area).
Apparently it’s a good spot for fishing.
This is the boardwalk to Brandywine Falls. (Notice the trees doing that creative root thing in very little dirt.)
Brandywine Falls! You come in from the top, where it looks like a gutter-wide trickle of water is flowing over mostly dry rock, so it’s quite impressive to see how it fans out below.
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