Trail Review: Slate Run Metro Park, Canal Winchester, Ohio
Another summer break is here—and that means that it’s time to pack up the car and head out to explore some new trails! For our first trail experiment of the summer, my daughter and I decided to visit Slate Run Metro Park—one of the few that we missed a couple of summers ago, when we set out to visit as many metro parks as possible. The last (and only) time we visited Slate Run was seven years ago, for the kindergarten field trip—so we were excited for our return trip.
Slate Run has a number of amenities—the most notable of which is the living historical farm, which shows visitors what life was like on an Ohio farm in the 1880s. You can stroll the grounds to explore the barns and gardens and even the farmhouse—all of which is managed by costumed staff and volunteers. We took the time to visit the baby piglets and recreate a picture in the barn. We were also screamed at by a goose and chased by a lamb—but those are stories for another time.
In addition to the farm, Slate Run also offers a variety of picnic areas and playgrounds—so there are plenty of activities for the family.
After spending some time on the farm, though, we drove to another part of the park. My daughter had chosen some wetland trails to explore, so we changed into our walking shoes and set out. From the beginning, I was surprised by the terrain. While I’d noticed from my research that the park doesn’t offer many paved trails (just the .3-mile Lake Trail), for some reason, I wasn’t expecting the trails to be cleared grass trails. It made for a surprisingly challenging walk—even more so because it had rained a bit while we were visiting the farm, so we were hiking through wet grass. Along our walk, we explored parts of a couple of different trails—but, apart from the occasional boardwalk through the wetlands, they were all grass.
While the hike was definitely challenging, it was also scenic. We enjoyed exploring the fields and wetlands—and finding frogs and snakes in the water around us and a variety of birds in the trees and birdhouses near the trail. But while most of the metro parks have marked maps throughout the trails, they seemed uncommon here. We saw just a couple of maps along the way—and though we had our own paper map, it wasn’t always clear (and we may have gotten lost a couple of times).
In the end, we enjoyed our visit to Slate Run—but the highlight of the visit was definitely the farm. We enjoyed the scenery on the trails, but we agreed that it wouldn’t necessarily be a place we’d visit just for walking.
Pros:
– Lots to see and do: playgrounds, picnic areas, and a working historical farm
– A variety of habitats to explore
– Great place for bird watching
Cons:
– Most trails are grass trails, which can make for challenging walking
– Trails aren’t always well marked
You can learn more about Slate Run Metro Park on the Metro Parks website.
And be sure to check out all of our other trail reviews!
