Gabby traveled with her co-worker to Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which is between Cleveland and Akron Ohio back in April. The park has a train ride through the park, which we were excited to see, we didn’t realize that the park existed and was only a 3-hour ride away. Since the trip was rather last minute, the observation cars with the panoramic views were all taken, so we had to ride the regular cars. Since it was early spring, there was not much sign of life along the train ride, the trees were not even budding yet. We passed a marsh looking place that had an eagles nest, but overall the scenery was not much to look at. The train ride goes through a few small towns, gets to the end of the line, and then goes back to the station. After the train ride, we drove along a few of the roads to some of the lookouts and saw two waterfalls- Bridal Falls and Brandywine Falls. We visited the gift shop, and found and both purchased a “Passport to Your National Parks” book, which is a small booklet that is broken down into regions, with areas to collect cancellation stamps from each national park, national historic sites, and national battlefields and recreation areas. We excitedly placed our first stamps in the book, and soon got to planning our next National Park Adventure.

The National Parks Passport is a neat souvenir to collect stamps and cancellations in to mark which parks you have been to and when, and even better- it’s free! Visitors Centers or gift shops usually have a kiosk that sell the passports and also have the cancellation stamps available for the park. If you forget your passport (which I did when we went to Shenandoah), they have what looks like a bookmark that has three blank stickers on it that you can peel off to place in your passport later (which cost about $1). Some sites have additional stamps of various scenery or wildlife you can see while in the parks.

We plan to visit Cuyahoga Valley National Park as one of our first stops on our journey to the west coast. Gabby looks forward to seeing the park a little more alive and green, and Billy has yet to see the park!

~GW