About this Trail
The glacial grooves, carved during the ice age 18,000 years ago, will set you straight if you think that the glaciers were sort of over-sized ice cubes.
Kelleys Island State Park has 5-6 miles of hiking trails through various habitats. We were there in summer and the meadow flowers were spectacular.
We especially enjoyed sitting on the North Shore Alvar (an alvar is a challenging environment for plants and animals because it has little soil over the limestone), watching what we think was probably a Lake Erie Water Snake (it was in Lake Erie anyhow!).
Kelleys Island is part of a chain across the lake, and migratory birds island hop in the spring and fall.
For winter, there is cross-country skiing, ice skating, and ice fishing.
Put-in-Bay, on nearby South Bass Island, has a winery, a geode you can visit and lots of easy bike riding (and probably too many guys with many cases of beer waiting for the ferry on a Friday afternoon in the summer (-:). Directions to Trailhead (or put-in on water trails)
It is a 20 minute ferry ride. http://www.kelleysislandferry.com/ From the landing, you can rent bikes or kayaks (OK, this is "lake kayaking"). Notes on Difficulty Rating
Pets are permitted on some of the camp sites. Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes so waves can be high in storms.
