The Great Seal State Park is located outside of Chillicothe, Ohio; which was our State’s first capital before it was moved to Columbus.  On this trip I was lucky to have my friend Jeannette, who traveled all the way from Canada to hike with me. We were training for the Camino de Santiago in Spain at the time, so we picked a challenging hike; the Shawnee Ridge Loop. 

The Shawnee is a 12.1-mile trek through the woods, and up and down very step ridges. It was a challenge indeed! You can find the trail head at the first parking/camping lot, right behind the bathrooms (I love a trailhead with a bathroom!). You have to look for a little bit, but you will see the sign. The trail is definitely rustic, sometimes very overgrown, and hard to follow. I would definitely recommend using All Trails for this one.

You are pretty much in the woods for the whole hike, and the hills keep you on your toes! It felt like we climbed forever, only to find we just reached a plateau and had more to climb to reach the top! I definitely recommend doing this hike when conditions are dry because the hills are both high and steep, so wet conditions would make this an exceedingly difficult hike. We did run into a few fellow hikers, but for the most part we felt pretty isolated on this trail.

Some strange highlights, we found the frame of an old truck randomly in the middle of the forest and I cannot image how that got there. But the creepiest thing we found was at the top of one very steep hill, these doll heads!

We have no idea why these were placed in this very remote location, but we decided to keep walking, and maybe pick up our pace a little. I did some Googling when we got home, but never did find any reference to the doll heads, or any explanation why they were there. Just a nice creepy mystery to add to our list of adventures!

Here is my itinerary for the day:

Note, the trail was much more challenging than we anticipated, so we did end up lobbing off the last portion and just hit the loop back to the parking lot. I was on the back loop that we found the doll heads, just for your reference.

If you decide to take this trip for yourself, please share your experiences. I look forward to hearing from you!