Hocking Hills - Sphinx at Old Man's Cave
Somewhere between the confines of sleepy suburban Cincinnati and the wandering foothills of eastern Ohio, lies Hocking Hills State Park. It was just a few days past Christmas, and a group of kids from my youth group were eager to drive the two hours for a day hike. We all had a bad case of cabin fever having been locked in our homes as a result of a winter storm that dropped two feet of snow in our city.
It took just an hour to get past the sprawling neighborhoods and into the middle of nowhere where our first stop was at a rural WAFFLEHOUSE diner. I figured I’d take these guys out into rural America to broaden their horizons a bit and see what life is really like out in farm country.
Our table was adorned with sticky laminated placemats that doubled as menus containing simple pictures of food and corresponding prices. The great thing about the WAFFLEHOUSE menu is that you don’t even have to read: just point and grunt. One of my kids demonstrated the ease of this method by pointing a big clumsy finger at the picture of the chopped steak as he uttered an, “Ugh-Ugh” and an “Oh-Oh” in perfect caveman dialect. Our scraggly-haired waitress understood the routine and asked if he wanted hash-browns too. “Uh-huh!” he replied emphatically.
Wafflehouse Menu: Ugh-Ugh!
The food was simple and consisted of four basic food groups: burnt toast, greasy hash-browns, runny eggs, and black coffee with an oily film on top. Any semblance of healthy food was relegated to a banana muffin that sweated inside an individually wrapped plastic sheath. Believe it or not, the greasiness we called food tasted delicious. The only complaint registered was by the girls who were appalled that their coffee didn't taste like Starbucks. I kindly informed them that it wasn’t too long ago when coffee only came in one flavor: black.
The denizens of Wafflehouses usually consist of plumber-butt truck drivers and senior citizens who favor plaid shirts. But that morning we noticed a group of road weary twenty-somethings who were chain smoking at the adjacent table. I wondered if they were conducting an anthropological study on rural dining, as we were, when one of my friends recognized a familiar sound of Hebrew. Coincidentally, my friend (being from Israel) also speaks Hebrew, so he proceeded to say hello to his peeps. Turns out these Israelis were drifting the highways of rural Ohio on their way to NYC for New Year’s. It was all kind of strange. I mean, what are the chances of my Israeli friend meeting fellow Israelis out here in the boondocks? I noticed that after a few brief words of conversation our new friends kindly pointed & grunted their orders too.
We drove another hour on a winding two-lane road in the countryside passing dead corn fields and beat-up old barns. It was an endless road full of the tell-tale signs of rural America: old tires converted into flowerbeds, wind-chimes made from aluminum cans, and those metallic colored balls that look like oversized Christmas ornaments sitting on pedestals. I have to admit, I was feeling a little out of place in my Volkswagen as I passed one Ford F-150 after another, each donning its own gun rack and NRA bumper sticker.
When we finally arrived at Hocking Hills state park we were ready to scream from being cramped in the car for so long. We took our energy out on the trail that began with an icy descent down narrow steps. The whole time I was thinking of this documentary I watched on public television called Touching the Void where this guy broke his leg at the peak of an icy 21,000 foot mountain in Peru, and had to climb down this giant glacier all by himself. The only difference was that I had not broken any bones yet and I descended a whopping 210 ft in total.
Old Man's Cave
We traversed the icy paths into this sweeping arch called Old Man’s Cave. Hanging from the cave’s mouth were icicles that resembled teeth-like fangs melting slowly from the semi-warm air. The icicles were the size of pillars with jagged edges dripping water incessantly. I told the kids to avoid going directly under the icicles in fear of the ice falling and crushing them like a pestle and mortar. Around us were massive boulders which served as cold resting places where we sat to look over the edge and admire the evergreens that spotted the sky. Down below we spotted fallen trees that lined the rushing waters of the creek. We crossed over a moss covered bridge and followed the creek bed towards a giant stone that resembled the head of a Sphinx. The waters led over a 30 foot waterfall that dropped into a small pool where the waters froze into a thin sheet of ice spread out over a stone plateau.
After having lunch inside the dwellings of another cave, we began to hike back reveling in the day. Not before we climbed through crevices and icy rocks defying all sensibilities just to get a few pictures. And despite an incident where a kid fell knee-deep into bone chilling water, we all managed to get back to the trailhead in one piece. And so I pointed to the car and in perfect caveman speak, I bellowed an, "UGH-UGH!" and they knew it was time to leave Old Man's Cave and become civilized again.
- Marvin A.
