I started at Point 16 because I saw the sign and an open area across the road. In hindsight, it is probably best to park at the area marked "Trailhead" on the map. Who knew? Anyway, the first section of the Red Trail heading away from the road is just early successional forest, small trees and no spectacular geologic or botanical features. In other words - kind of boring, especially in the winter. I turned right at point 17 onto the Green Trail and the trees got a little bigger and the trail had some turns and dips and rises on its way to Oaks Falls.
It's kind of hard to tell from the picture but there is not really a lot to see here. OK, that is exactly what you can tell from the picture. It is just a small stream making a short fall without a good area from which to view it. So I did not linger for long, but continued on my way to Patty Falls.
Patty falls is actually two waterfalls. The Green Trail goes above them and you can take the Purple trail down to view them from below. The lower pic is not my best work but the lighting was poor and it was a rather small waterfall and there was something in my eye and............. Anyway, you can stand close enough to the bigger fall to feel some of the spray, not that you would want to in February.
After leaving Patty Falls the trail goes through a fairly young section of forest that has occasional large trees known as "wolf trees." These are trees that grew up in a field when there were no other trees close by. Not only are they larger than the other trees that have more recently grown around them, they have lower limbs (or the dead subs of lower limbs that have been shaded out) and have a greater horizontal spread than a typical forest-grown tree. Here in Englewood, most of the wolf trees are white oaks.
Beyond point 24 the trail is on a boardwalk through the Pumpkin Spice Ash and Swamp Forest. I'm sure the emerald ash borers appreciate the fact that Five Rivers MetroParks has chosen to inject pumpkin spice flavor into the ash trees. Oh wait, its just pumpkin ash - no spice - and they are trying to save them because pumpkin ash is a species that is rare in Ohio. I may come back when leaves are on the trees to get a better feel for the composition of this swamp forest. In addition to the pumpkin ash I noticed some hickory (shellbark I presume) and not many sycamore or cottonwood that you would expect closer to the river.
I took a left at point 5 and continued on towards Martindale Falls, named after Wink Martindale, the host of the world famous TV game show Tic-Tac-Dough. The woods along this stretch are a bit more mature on the left, while on the right a bridle trail goes through a field reverting to forest.
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| Martindale Falls from above |
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| Martindale Falls from below |
The trail away from the falls is parallel to the trail to them but at a lower elevation. The area to the right is not part of the park but there are trails and occasional hikers. This is a nice stretch of woods that continues until you reach point 7 and turn right. There the trail gets closer to the Stillwater River and goes through the sycamore, cottonwood, and box elder of the riparian forest. Along the way there are many large, interestingly shaped sycamores. Then the trail goes through a mile-long mud puddle. That is how you know you are getting close to Englewood Lake.
It is obviously a man-made lake created when they excavated soil to use to build Englewood Dam. They have since un-dammed the river and have created channels to and from the river to give the lake a fresh supply of water.
I'll review Aullwood Garden and South Park (yes, that is what it is called) when I visit them in the early summer.
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