There are also a variety of different trails and most of them have at last one or two good inclines so you can feel like you've gotten a good workout without taxing yourself too much. I can't remember the last time we went to Chapin Forest, though. I think it might have been over a year since we'd visited. This park is great--but it's also only about 5 minutes away from the Arboretum, which is our favorite place, so it just doesn't always occur to me that we should go there.
I may have mentioned that our town is right on Lake Erie, so in the summer, tourists take over. There's a strip with lots of different food stands and arcades and things. There are a lot of cottages. And the sidewalk along the strip eventually connects to the trail at the State Park, so on weekends during the summer, we usually stay away to avoid the kids and bikes. Since Memorial Day is the start of the chaos, we decided to venture back to Chapin Forest on Saturday.
Why have been away for so long? |
There were several things that I'd forgotten about Chapin Forest. The first is that the incline from the parking lot we like up to the main trail is killer. It's short, but it's steep. In just .25-miles, the elevation gain is 81-feet (for comparison, our 1-mile neighborhood loop has a total elevation gain of 11 feet--and that's only because we have to go up and over some train tracks). With the ice and then the heat, we've mostly avoided the hilly parts of the Arboretum this year, so it's been a while since we've had a good incline. My legs, especially my calves, hated me. (Barley, of course, bounded up the trail like this was nothing.)
There weren't too many dogs on the trail, but I was a little disappointed in the people who did have dogs with them. One couple had an Irish Wolfhound (which I find fascinating) with them and it was off-leash, so there were a few times we had to change directions to avoid crossing paths with them--it just makes me really cranky when we go to parks with leash laws and people don't obey them. It's frustrating when people decide the rules don't apply to them and make our experience more stressful than it has to be. There were also a lot of people with retractable leashes and very excitable dogs on the end of them. I've got a retractable leash that we use when I take Barley out to potty, but it doesn't leave our yard. At our parks, I don't trust people with retractable leashes--they tend to be the ones who are talking on the phone rather than paying attention to their dogs or the ones that insist on letting their dogs try to come meet Barley even when we've pulled way off the trail to avoid them. So, we had to stay on our toes a little more than I had anticipated when we left the house.
Overall, though, it was a great change of scenery and I had one smiley pup most of the adventure. We kept things easy again this week and finished this week with 26.71 miles.
Hope that everyone in Nashville is having a wonderful time at BlogPaws--we're enjoying living vicariously through you on Instagram!
There are ledges along the Lucky Stone Loop. I love the ledges in our area, but the last time we went to explore some at Nelson-Kennedy Ledges State Park, we got hopeless lost and I've been a little wary of exploring them. The ledges at Chapin Forest are awesome to look at--even though there aren't as many interesting formations as at the other park--but they aren't really accessible and the trails are clearly marked, so I can observe them without the fear of getting lost.
Barley's practicing for a new career as a lumberjack. |
Chapin Forest is insanely shady at this time of year. It was a sunny day and almost 70 degrees, which normally is too much for Barley to do more than a mile or so at a time. But the shade made it possible to get in a full 2.73 miles at once. We probably could have gone farther with no problems, but I was getting hangry and lots of other people were starting to show up at the park with bikes, kids, and dogs.
Barley had a great time at the park and we had quite a few chances to practice reactions to distractions. There was a little boy, probably eight or nine, with his dad running down a hill we were going up. I moved Barley to my right to give her a little more space and she did great--until the kid got past us and started dragging is feet in the gravel and making weird noises. Barley kept looking over her shoulder at him until he was out of sight, but she was still responsive when I gave her commands, so we're still counting it as a win.
There weren't too many dogs on the trail, but I was a little disappointed in the people who did have dogs with them. One couple had an Irish Wolfhound (which I find fascinating) with them and it was off-leash, so there were a few times we had to change directions to avoid crossing paths with them--it just makes me really cranky when we go to parks with leash laws and people don't obey them. It's frustrating when people decide the rules don't apply to them and make our experience more stressful than it has to be. There were also a lot of people with retractable leashes and very excitable dogs on the end of them. I've got a retractable leash that we use when I take Barley out to potty, but it doesn't leave our yard. At our parks, I don't trust people with retractable leashes--they tend to be the ones who are talking on the phone rather than paying attention to their dogs or the ones that insist on letting their dogs try to come meet Barley even when we've pulled way off the trail to avoid them. So, we had to stay on our toes a little more than I had anticipated when we left the house.
Overall, though, it was a great change of scenery and I had one smiley pup most of the adventure. We kept things easy again this week and finished this week with 26.71 miles.
Hope that everyone in Nashville is having a wonderful time at BlogPaws--we're enjoying living vicariously through you on Instagram!