Pike Lake

We’ve had almost a week now of clear blue skies, chilly mornings and nights and the start of fall color so I’m thinking about our family weekends at Pike Lake which usually happened in early October. It started in the spring of 1979 when David was 6 months old and some friends asked us to join them at Pike Lake State Park near Paint Creek just south of Chillicothe. I had great memories of state park weekends with other families when I was growing up (the photo at left was taken at Hueston Woods in May of 1962) so, naturally, we said yes.

We had a lot of fun that weekend but you might wonder how when you hear the details. Even though I swore off of word problems when I was finished with high school math (or when high school math was finished with me), I present the following word problem. After spending 1 drizzly weekend in 2 cabins with 2 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, 5 families, 8 kids, 10 adults and 36 muddy feet, how many people would do it again next year? The answer would be zero if the people were sensible and logical. We weren’t, however, so we returned to Pike Lake with a group of families every fall for almost 20 years.

What kept us coming back? Well, for starters, we got more cabins on our return visit – a small one-bedroom unit for each family. Later we discovered that we could rent larger, two-bedroom cabins with screened porches, built around a grassy cul de sac – just like the Ritz only with thin towels, leaky showers, temperamental ovens and no room service. Here’s what else Pike Lake didn’t have: a lodge, a restaurant, a swimming pool, hot tubs, television reception or phone service which kept it from being overrun by “tourons,” my aunt’s term for tourist morons. It couldn’t have been better.

Pike Lake was truly the backwater of the Ohio State Park system and we liked it that way. It was run by a pair of polite, neatly dressed, good-old-boy park rangers – locals who combined Andy Taylor and Barney Fife with Yogi Bear and Boo Boo. The park was small by most standards, like J. M. Barrie’s description of Neverland in “Peter Pan.” It was “the snuggest and most compact; not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed.” Its centerpiece was Pike Lake itself, surrounded by autumn color, small enough to hike around and big enough for fishing – little kids could walk out on the little dock and catch little fish. One year we discovered the fleet of pedal boats which allowed the kids to spread out all over the lake and dodge water balloons launched by the dads – in retrospect, not ecological and probably not safe but definitely fun. (It’s not easy being green.)

Our families graduated from the slide and baby swings to hiking on trails all within easy access of our cabins. There was Dead Dog trail, probably named for the animal remains we found one year but just as likely named for what I always felt like after that uphill climb. The Wildcat Trail, which was more popular with the kids than the moms, ended in a long mudslide and left a permanent impression on the seats of many pairs of jeans. A slightly longer walk took us to the old cemetery on the hilltop where the color was always spectacular. In the years when we had energy left after hiking, we played family soccer in the field near our cabins. That lasted until the kids got bigger and faster and the adults got older and creakier; then we relaxed under the influence of Advil while the kids played football which was the most fun when the field was muddy.

The level of excitement always cranked up a notch after dark, especially when the kids were little and used to early bedtimes. Of course, we had a campfire, the bigger the better. All the kids loved making s’mores and throwing sticks in the fire; but for a few, it was an all-consuming passion. Pike Lake alumni who are reading this may be surprised and relieved to learn that the little guy with dark, curly hair, who routinely blistered his fingertips playing in the campfire, has now become an attorney rather than an arsonist.

One night the kids were sent up the hill behind our cabins on a snipe hunt – a bright idea that ended with tears, band-aids, ice bags and two dads spending some time in the doghouse. After the kids got older, Saturday was the time for a scary night visit to the old cemetery. Several dads (who else?) would drive up there ahead of everyone else, dress up and then greet us with eerie lights, weird sound effects and other tactics designed to insure that no one would get an uninterrupted night’s sleep. One year they planned the Scariest Show on Earth featuring a dad whose four-year-old daughter didn’t know he was coming. The other kids flipped out when they saw his huge, ghostly figure in white deacon’s robes among the gravestones until his daughter said, “Oh, it’s okay - that’s just my daddy.”

A whole complex of Pike Lake traditions developed over the years. Some families couldn’t come every year so others took their places (some years, we had eight families in our group); and the traditions continued, especially with food. Friday lunch became Skyline Time, Friday night was always Italian night and all the kids showed up at our cabin for pancakes on Saturday morning. Once you stayed in a particular cabin, it was officially yours – we always stayed in cabin 23 and knew exactly which kitchen drawers stuck and how to open the hide-a-bed. Just after we drove up the big hill and headed down into Paint Creek Valley, Paul would put on the tape of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” We always arrived first, so we could anticipate the fun to come. We always left last, seeing the quiet, empty cabins and the deserted play field and picnic tables but knowing we would be back again next year.

Eventually the demands of high school activities and friends kept our kids and our friends’ kids from joining the weekend at Pike Lake. Once the kids were gone, the magic was gone for me. It was too hard to return to a place so full of the ghosts of kids jiggling cane poles, eating pancakes, collecting buckeyes, and sliding in the mud. David was 6 and just overwhelmed by the fun of the weekend when he exclaimed, “These are the best times of my life.” It really was a gift to have those good times then and it's nice to be able to savor the memories and to enjoy the photos that remain now.