Roadtrip Post #2: Cuyahoga Valley National Park

The next day, we drove to Cuyahoga Valley National Park!  It's only about 45 minutes from Cleveland. We started out with a really nice hike around the park for a few hours, that included a stop by a very active bat cave!  They had the opening to the bat cave closed, because they were worried about the safety of the bats (because people suck). 

Speaking of people sucking, look at what they did to this tree! It's just shameful. So many people carved their initials and names into this poor tree. 

These trees were crazy!  They had crazy root systems that allowed them to grow basically out of the rocks! 

 

The bat cave!  They put some bars in front of it so people wouldn't try to go in, to protect the bats. 

A beautiful waterfall! 

After our awesome hike, we drove over to an area that was supposed to have lots of wildlife
(including beavers and otters). We, however, did not see any wildlife except for some ducks.  There were TONS of lily pads, so I was hoping to see some frogs since in cartoons frogs are always hanging out on lily pads, but there were zero frogs I'm sad to say.  Real question:  Has anyone ever seen frogs hanging out on lily pads?  Is this a real thing that happens?  I've seen it in a million cartoons, but maybe that's not a real thing.... haha :)

A million lily pads! 

After hanging out there for a bit, we drove over to an area with a cool covered bridge!  It was beautiful. 

 That was Cuyahoga Valley National Park!  It's a pretty small National Park, but we had a fun day there.  The next day, we drove to Niagara Falls, which will be the next post!