Gary S. Williams

Hiking Ohio: A very interesting book on hiking the State of Ohio. This is the home state of Grandma Gatewood; the first woman to hike the full Appalachian Trail (at age 67 on her first hike) and an avid hiker of her native state of Ohio. In fact she has a trail named after her at Hocking Hills State Park, Ohio. See pages 94-97 for more information.

I am puzzled by the size of this book considering it would be more useful as a smaller trail guide. This lost a "star" for the review. I cannot imagine taking this guide with me on a hike. The pictures of the trail maps are set up in such a way that it is very easy to photocopy them at the size they are printed to take along. As it is, Williams has created a great table book that aids hikers in planning and discovering new and interesting places to travel.

Personally, as someone with limited funds and time, I find the "83 day hikes" to be very appealing. It gives busy people and entry level hikers enough choices to validate investing in a hiking book that they will actually utilize. Additionally, the information on parking and amenities helps tremendously with planning. In fact, the "Area Information" seems helpful enough that one could easily plan a hike into a long weekend trip. With that in mind, I could comfortably recommend this as a good choice for anyone looking to discover a state that does not get a lot of attention for its beauty and natural resources.… (mer)

Rating: 3.5 of 5

Hiking Ohio was well-organized, accurate as far as my experience with Ohio trails (northwest/central Ohio), and a solid jumping off point for planning a hike. Overall, my two biggest complaints were the size of the book (extra weight in backpack) and its lack of color - the entire book was in black and white, including maps and trail shots. However, I really appreciated the difficulty ratings, detailed descriptions, and the "Other Areas of Interest" section. Recommended to those looking to hike scenic Ohio.… (mer)

This is a wonderful book to get ideas on where to take our next day trip, though it should be noted that I do not believe this is a complete record of all the hiking trails that are available in Ohio... but it's a good start.

My largest complaint about the book is that the coordinates for each trail start (or parking lot) are not provided in the format that most of my devices use. While it is not difficult to find a converter, the additional step is slightly annoying.

However, the descriptions and the "Other areas of interest" sections in each listing make up for that.… (mer)