Ohio State Parks

A while back I had a post titled Shoot the Hills, it was during this post that I mentioned the Ohio State Parks. I also mentioned then that my family and I love to go camping. We do most of our camping in an Ohio State Park, though we sometimes camp in private campgrounds. The Ohio State Park system is made up of 73 State Parks, most offer camping of some sort. We (my wife) like the more developed campgrounds with electricity, flushing toilets and showers. I love to photograph nature and the parks are in some of the most scenic parts of Ohio. They are nothing compared to Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, but I enjoy them none the less. I have visited 19 of the parks and have camped in 8 of them. My 2 favorite parks are Hocking Hills State Park and Shawnee State Park. I like Hocking Hills as it is the most scenic and has the best hiking trails and I like Shawnee as it is also a very beautiful park and offers an abundance of wildlife opportunities. Shawnee's nature center is leaps and bounds above any of the other parks nature centers, I enjoy visiting it almost as much as my girls do. The image above was shot just outside Shawnee's nature center on the backside of the spillway of the lake. I love this image as it reminds me of fun times and the beautiful blue summer skies of Ohio. Mohican State Park is my wife's favorite park to camp in. My favorite part of Mohican is the river that runs through the campground. It is very shallow and runs quite slow so it is perfect for tubing. I love to sit in a tube and drift down the river, I could do it all day long. My family would rather swim in a boring old swimming pool, why would you want to swim in a pool when you can float down a river and see the beauty of God's creation as you float past it? I hope you enjoy learning a bit about the Ohio State Park system, if you would like to learn more you can visit their website at http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Default.aspx?alias=www.dnr.state.oh.us/parks.

Photoman