We got to ride our bikes on a beautiful trail today. We rode thirty miles, fifteen miles one way and then back to our car. The trail took us along the Ohio & Erie canal. The trail follows the old towpath. In the eighteen hundreds they dug a canal to connect Lake Erie to the Ohio River. Talk about ingenuity! They built locks in the canal so that it could be navigated both north and south, and had mules pull the boats along. Here is a picture of what is left of one of the locks.
The doors to the locks were made of wood.
We had a wonderful time riding. The temperature was in the high eighties, but there was a cool breeze, and much of the time we were shaded by all the trees that line the canal. There were times we could see the Cuyahoga River on one side, and the canal on the other.
We saw two herons, this very shy one, and this one who didn’t seem to mind us at all.
We also saw many Canadian Geese, some turtles, and a snake! The snake scared us both, it was swimming in the canal, toward our side. It was between two and three feet long. We think it was a Northern Water Snake, which is not venomous. But they look a lot like cottonmouths. The good news is, cottonmouths do not live in Ohio! I did not stop to try and photograph the snake!
The hardwood forest was so beautiful!
At some places it looked like a jungle!
The trail was easy to ride or walk on.
We also heard many of the birds singing to us, and we think some frogs had something to say, frogs or some other creature with a very deep voice!
They had a statue of a mule in honor of the work they had done.
TORREZ TRAVELS 
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