52 Hike Challenge: Month One Recap

As promised, I’m holding myself accountable to complete the 52 hike challenge this year. This entails hiking once a week in 2018. Every month, I plan to recap the hikes that I completed. This is the first of twelve recaps.

Hike #1: Lake Erie, 2 miles

My first hike of the year was a little unique. Lake Erie completely froze over at the beginning of January, making it accessible to walk on the frozen water. I at Edgewater Park and descended down to the water to walk. There’s something really cool about being able to walk on areas you typically can only experience either swimming or by boat. The hike itself was ~2 miles. It was the perfect way to kick off the new year and this new challenge.

Hike #2: Ithaca Falls, 1.2 miles

The second week of January was an exciting one for our family. We welcomed two new little ones (a niece and nephew), so we spent the majority of the weekend making visits. Our nephew’s family lives in Ithaca, so while I didn’t have a ton of free time, I hiked from their house to Ithaca Falls. It was freezing outside, and standing close to the falls was tough because it was raging, but it was quite the sight to see! I was happy to have allowed myself time to get outside even among all the craziness. They live fairly close to the falls, so this was my shortest hike of the month, only about 1.2 miles.

Hike #3: City Walk in Key West, 3.5 miles

A busy month for us, this hike took a little more planning than normal. We spent a long weekend visiting my family in Key West, FL. While I did complete a 4 mile run on this trip, my actual “hike” was a city walk from our vacation house to downtown Key West for brunch where we enjoyed crepes and mimosas, then continued further and experience our first hot sauce tasting! Luckily Key West is relatively small, so we covered a lot of ground in our 3.5 mile hike.

Hike #4: Ledges Loop, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, 2.6 miles 

This was probably my favorite hike of the month! I hosted the first Ohio group hike as the ambassador for the wonderful organization Women Who Hike. I shared the trail with 25 other amazing women on this morning while we shared some of our goals for the year and our hiking bucket lists. It was really fun to share one of my favorite trails with such a cool group of women.

Bonus hikes: While the hikes listed above helped me hit my quota for the month, I also completed several others just for fun. I hiked the Tree Farm Trail in CVNP, which is 2.75 miles and I hiked to Twin Sister Falls (also in CVNP), which was about 1.85 miles.

So far I’ve learned planning out hikes in advance is critical to making sure they actually happen. Including several back up hikes on different days helped, too, so I didn’t feel to stressed out if I couldn’t swing a hike I thought I was going to be able to make.

I’m excited to share my hikes for February, most of which I already have lined up. My goal for this month is to try some new trails I have yet to get to.