Dad’s and my relationship is kind of rocky, mostly because we are both pretty stubborn and hard-headed. We both have very strong opinions, and whenever those opinions clash, it always ends in tears on my end. My father and I don’t spend much alone time together. Any time I hang out with my dad, my sister is usually there, making it a little hard to actually connect with my dad one-on-one. I don’t enjoy fighting with my father, but I won’t hesitate to explain to him why he is wrong

In 2017, Dad asked my sister, Amanda, and me if we were open to going to a collection of hiking trails called Hocking Hills in Logan, Ohio. Unfortunately, Amanda was still in theater camp at the time, so she wasn’t available to come because of her performance; however, I had finished camp the week prior, and I was very interested in joining my father on this vacation.

We booked the cabin and started looking at all of the different parks and attractions around our temporary home to partake in. There were six different hiking trails that we had our eyes on, along with either zip-lining through the trees or riding ATV’s. Both sounded fun (although I didn’t have much interest in riding around on the dirty tracks in the ATV’s). The cabin we decided to go with had two bedrooms, one bathroom, a sauna, a hot tub, and a large wood fire pit outside.

At the end of September, Dad and I started our four-hour drive south into Ohio. After taking the expressway for nearly all of the trip, we made it to Logan. To enter our cabin, we had to drive on extremely windy roads that constantly gave me headaches. There were plenty of sharp turns hidden behind the large cluster of dark green trees. We would often see deer or other forest animals running across the road.

One of the best parks we decided to visit was Conkles Hollow. Conkles Hollow consisted of a gorge and a rim, with a trail around the rim, and a waterfall with lots of walking paths within the gorge. Dad and I decided to drive to Conkles Hollow in the morning, knowing we would both want to explore the entirety of it, which would take a good part of our day. We had only planned on staying for three days to be back in time to see Amanda’s performance.

While standing in the gorge, I looked up and noticed the beautiful large trees covering the gorge I was standing in. Little light was peaking through all around except for the waterfall that was barely flowing. The steep stone stairs leading down to the small pool of water where the waterfall would normally flow into were relatively busy, with about two or three groups of people climbing up and down.

Walking around the rim was thrilling. There were hardly any ropes closing off the edge of the cliff down to the gorge. I constantly wondered how many times hikers had accidentally gotten a little too close to the edge, but thankfully I never witnessed any incidents in person. There were trees on both sides of the paths, with a large forest to the left of us and a few trees here and there on our right. The dirt path had roots every few feet that had grown into the ground, requiring hikers to either move around or on top of the root. 

Due to the fact that we were spending three days here, we were able to go to about one or two of the six parks in a day. We would spend a few hours here and there, taking pictures of ourselves at every park in front of the main attraction, whether it was the (currently) dried out waterfall at Conkle's Hollow, the spacious cave at Rock House, or the beautiful clear, blue pool of water at Old Man’s Cave.

“Excuse me, can you take our picture?” Dad asked a couple walking by.

“Absolutely!” The woman responded. She grabbed Dad’s phone and let us walk about two feet away from the edge.

We were standing on a small overlook of the gorge, nothing but the tops of the trees could show up in the picture, but the photo turned out amazing. The area was in the shape of a circle, and it was no doubt carved out of the forest to have a convenient spot for hikers to take pictures of themselves and the view. Although we were both dirty and sweaty from the earth all around us and having hiked for an hour, Dad and I both had huge smiles on our faces and looked totally at home in our environment.

The other parks were just as beautiful, along with the zip lining, which we continued to partake in in our returning vacations years after. The drive back to Michigan was peaceful and fun, with both of us listening to music and singing. We had arrived in time for Amanda’s performance.

Dad and I still to this day fight over little and big things, but I am so ecstatic that I have the ability to look back on this vacation and remember all of the adventures that we took on together, with little conflict and only smiles. It is very important to me to have memories to think about whenever something bad happens, so I can think back to the good times and why and how we connect with each other. Sometimes, when Dad and I fight, I will think back to Hocking Hills and try to call back the great feelings we shared together.