Summit County Metroparks Fall Hiking Spree: Schumacher Trail

Every year between September 1st and November 30th the Summit County Metroparks host their annual Fall Hiking Spree. Hikers must complete 8 of the 15 trails listed in order to receive a metal badge that adorns the hiking stick you will receive upon completion of your first hiking spree. Spree is free to all Summit Co. residents, non-residents may participate but to receive hiking rewards it is $10 first year then $5 for veteran hikers.
List and more information can be found here.

For us, the hiking spree really motivated us to get out and explore more of the area's metroparks, sure we had a handful of favorites already, but years ago when we were new to the area it pushed us to explore more of the parks that we wouldn't have explored otherwise and we ended up finding a few new favorites. 

This year to inspire all of you to get out and explore I'll be posting about each of the trails and hikes we complete. I'd love to hear your feedback about your experiences on each of the trails we post!

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Sept 28, 2015 - Schumacher Trail 

The Schumacher Trail is located on Cuyahoga St. off of Northampton Rd. 
It begins with a few bridges leading you over a beautiful valley filled with trees, rocks, and stream, the sunlight dapples everything as you make your way along the path.

As you continue on you hardly notice the slow decent into the valley as the trail is calm and winding. Once you reach the bottom of the hill, you have a beautiful view of yet another ravine. It was here we really began seeing wildlife. Off in the distance you could see 3 deer taking a break for water then make their way up the other hill to find more nuts and leaves. Up in the treetops was quite a commotion, the grackles were harvesting the nuts from the beech trees, as they swarmed from tree to tree you were guaranteed a couple bonks on the head as they sent down flying bits of debris. 

We then continued on down the valley, I found some interesting mushrooms which I will write about in another post. At this point we were at the intersection of the Valley Trail and Schumacher Trail, we decided to see what was down the Valley then turn back. Near the end of the trail, just before the towpath, was a bridge from which we were able to see a 'beach area'. We strolled down the trail to the beach and wandered around a bit, too chilly for 'beaching' but the sand was nice and it looked like many had spent hours of fun there. Turning back to get back to the Schumacher Trail we start to realize the hill we just climbed down, now we head up.

And up.
And up.
​And up.
Twisting, turning, climbing. 
Till at last we reach the top.
Greeted by the sweet easy bridges over the beautiful valley.
​I now see where this park got it's '3' difficulty rating. 

A beautiful trail with a surprise at the end!

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Wildlife we saw:
1 Toad
1 Millipede
Trees filled with grackles 
3 White tail deer