Richland Furnace, Ohio November, 2001
The Richland Furnace trails are near the small town of Hamden, Ohio in Vinton County, just south of McArthur off Rt. 93. The furnace itself, pictured below, is a pretty amazing site to see. Back in pre-Civil War Ohio, this furnace was built to make steel. The furnace is a boiler encased in bricks with a large area underneath for the combustibles, and a slide out the side for the molten steel. We found ore and slag all around (you can't miss it, even if you're blind), explored the furnace, then hit the trails.
Getting to the Furnace was easy, although I would guess the long 2-foot water hole we navigated would be interesting in the spring. Fortunately, we had a perfectly sunny fall day, and the leaves were down so trail visibility was excellent.
This was more of a scouting trip and it was my first visit to these trails. I'll be back, as Arnold says. Mark came over from Cinci in his awesome '86 4Runner; Dana led in his CJ5 sporting new 35" MT/R's; and Ken and Hope drove their brand spanking new Explorer Sport Trac. Brave souls.
The trails we ran were mostly dry with a lot of hills. There were just enough rocks and trees to make it quite interesting. One initial climb was punctuated throughout with smooth smallish 6-8" rocks; another was a more severe angle with the added benefit of leaves covering the trail. We also found this fun hill, which started on a plateau --> 90* turn downhill with a nice tree on the right side --> the right front tire drops into a hole, pitching the vehicle toward the tree --> the descent is about 40*. Everyone tiptoed and made it without issue. My XL boat required a multi-point turn on the plateau to at least get pointed downhill, and I came within 3" of the tree. Close enough.
We were tooling around and Dana found a dog. This little hunting dog looked badly burned, but he came right up to us. We gave him jerky, a sandwich, some water, and other goodies, and he seemed to be extremely grateful. He was wearing a collar from Ross County, but it appeared that someone had sprayed him with a flammable liquid and set him alight. He also had a large open wound in his back. So after tending to him, we decided the thing to do would be to get him to a vet, so Dana made him comfortable in the Jeep and off we went. Being Sunday, we struck out in McArthur, then Chillicothe, then Circleville, so Dana took him to the OSU Vet Hospital. He was burned, but the little guy recovred quite well due to the care at OSU and his owners retrieved him. There had been a fire at a kennel and this dog was injured but escaped. Kind of made the whole day worthwhile.
