Welcome to my Hiking Blog

Welcome to the homepage for my hiking blog. I grew up in Hamilton, Ohio in a home surrounded on three sides by woods.One of my favorite activities as a child was to go walking through these woods. In fact, my many years of walking along the same paths wore a mini trail system through the forest. As I got older, I spent less time in the woods as school work and other pursuits consumed larger quantities of my time.

As a sophomore in college, I bought a book (from the bargain bin, where it never should have been) called 50 Hikes in Ohio by Ralph Ramey that reignited by interest in the woods. I also discovered a trail system immediately east of campus at Miami University, my now two-time alma mater. With this discovery, my hiking career was born. Ramey’s book interested me so much that I began writing about each new trail I hiked. It is that still-growing collection of writings that is presented here.

While each blog entry is based on my personal experience while hiking the trail, I have tried to make the blog more useful to others by embedding my experience into a more general trail description. I have also included directions to the trailhead, hoping that you might find the same pleasure in hiking many of these trails that I have. Please keep in mind that this is a blog, not a publishable trail guide. Amazon.com is the best source I know for published trail guides. I have written an extensive collection of hiking guide reviews on Amazon; this link leads to a full collection of my Amazon reviews.

I have organized my hiking blog by region. Clicking on a link below will take you to my hiking blog for that region. Once there, you can search the blog using the search box or click on "list of trails" for a table summarizing my hikes for that region. The newer entries have my photos integrated into the trail descriptions and a Google map roughly showing the route of the hike. All distances are estimates, and while I make no guarantee that the information contained herein is accurate, the entries and web information were accurate at the time I hiked the trail, to the best of my knowledge. Enjoy the reading!

Here are links to the other regions of my hiking blog:

Golden Staff Hikes (the best hikes in this blog regardless of geography)

Alabama/Mississippi/Louisiana

Florida

Georgia

Illinois/Indiana

Kentucky

Michigan/Wisconsin/Minnesota

New England
New York/Pennsylvania

Ohio

South Carolina

Tennessee/North Carolina

Virginia/W. Virginia/Maryland/Delaware
Western USA (states west of Minnesota/Louisiana, including Alaska)


Or, for something completely different, grab a slice of my new pizza blog, complete with its 80 point rating system.

Closing out 2012 and opening up 2013

I closed out 2012 strong with December hiking trips to Aiken, SC (almost got rained out; only 1 new hike) and Tallahassee, FL (6 new hikes).  See the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida sections to read about the hikes.  All tallied, I set a new record for number of hikes in a calendar year with 44 new hikes in 2012, breaking my old record of 40 in 2010.

Looking forward to 2013, I currently have hiking trips planned to Kentucky and western New York for the early summer.  Also, I purchased an annual Georgia state parks pass for 2013, so I hope to be doing a lot of Georgia state park hikes this year.

See you on the trail,

David, aka the Mathprofhiker