Brett and I had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. Friday afternoon and Saturday morning were busy times with us catching up on yard work and painting the deck. Oh how I hate that deck! I have about 70% completed; with just the bottom level sides to paint. We moved the deck furniture back Sunday evening and enjoyed a nice picnic this evening before the thunderstorms came.

We had decided ahead of time that we wanted to cycle by ourselves during the weekend. Our cycling club was doing a Towpath Trail ride, but we wanted to do something different. Sunday morning we headed out to my favorite  trail, the Little Beaver Creek Greenway Trail in Columbiana County. I’ve ridden it several times, but Brett had never got to ride it.

It was a perfect day for cycling; sunny and in the 80s. This trail is very shady which makes it a cool ride on hot day. It was more crowded than I have ever seen it but still quiet with nowhere near the traffic that the Towpath Trail carries on a weekend. As usual,, we had lunch at the Steel Trolley Diner in Lisbon; one of my favorite dives that takes me back to my childhood trips to Lisbon.

I love the scenery along the trail, the well maintained trail and interesting stops we make a long the way. I can’t resist stopping at the White House Fruit Farm Market between Salem and Canfield. It has to be the nicest farm market in Ohio with undoubtedly the most amazing cake donuts and fresh cider! We also bought our annuals at a great family run nursery just north of the market. I love unique flowers, and they had a nice assortment at a good price. I will remember this for next year.

For Memorial Day, we headed out this morning to the Maple Highlands Trail just north of Middlefield. It runs north to Chardon. The trail is a standard rail trail with just run of the mill rural Ohio scenery. I was a little disappointed. I expected something a little more scenic considering the hills of Geauga County. The trail was in excellent shape. It was a smooth paved surface that identified all road crossings and had mile markers every 1/2 mile. A nice feature were the covered bridges that the park district built rather than just plain trestles.

It headed uphill for 4 miles out of the Headwaters Park trailhead which gave us a good workout and leveled for the last 4.5 miles. The trail was actually not very shady. The last mile or so into Chardon was the most shady. Once in Chardon it ends at State Route 44 about 1/2 mile south of the square. It is a very busy highway that climbs quite a bit to the square. We started to venture up but turned when we realized that the Memorial Day parade was in progress.

We finished the ride and had lunch at a Amish restaurant similar to the Hartville Kitchen in Middlefield. We also bought some cheese at the Middlefield Cheese Factory. I had forgotten that this was a fairly large Amish community. The rain pretty much held out until we were at the restaurant and was on and off as we headed home.