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Freelance outdoors writer Tom Lounsbury.

Freelance outdoors writer Tom Lounsbury.

The third day of a four-day stay for my wife, Ginny, and me in the Hocking Hills of southeastern Ohio was packed full with meeting wonderful folks from local businesses.

This started with the Columbus Washboard Company, followed by the Hocking Hills Moonshine Distillery, Hocking Hills Orchard and, lastly, Lockhart Ironworks. However, our adventures that day were far from over, because Hocking Hills offers a remarkable nightlife as well.

To start our evening off, Ginny and I had a reservation to dine at the Kindred Spirits Restaurant at Cedar Falls Inn, which entails 1840s log cabins and offers fine gourmet food cooked by bona fide chefs. It represents a casual, candle-lit experience, plus the inn has a bar, fireside lounge and rooftop garden to relax in. With an open kitchen, you can even watch the chefs cooking your meal, and it is a very quaint and relaxing atmosphere.

While Ginny and I were dining, we noticed a young man in chef’s garb going around to the tables and talking with customers to see if all was well. We would soon meet Josh Thurston, who grew up in the Hocking Hills, took culinary classes in high school, and has been working his way up in the restaurant business ever since.

Josh's present title was sous-chef, which is truly the person who manages all the working affairs in the kitchen, but he was very soon scheduled to become executive chef at Kindred Spirits, a lifelong dream that he has clearly worked hard for. It was a genuine pleasure meeting and talking with Josh, who took a “compass bearing” early in life and has successfully stayed the course.

A strategic beauty about dining at the Kindred Spirits Restaurant is that it is less than three miles from the John Glenn Astronomy Park, the first scheduled nightlife adventure for Ginny and me, especially with darkness fast approaching. When you want to look for stars, you need a dark and cloudless sky. However, what had been a beautiful, clear and sunny day was fast becoming cloudy, with predicted nighttime rains moving in. Just the same, we stayed the course ourselves and proceeded on. Well, folks, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and following through on matters can still be an adventure!

The John Glenn Astronomy Park is relatively new in the Hocking Hills State Park and was funded by the Friends of Hocking Hills State Park. It's open every day round the clock and is free to visitors (although donations are appreciated). A year before famous astronaut John Glenn’s death in 2016, he had given his consent to have the park named in his honor.

Glenn, who was proud of his home state of Ohio, was a distinguished fighter pilot in World War II and the Korean War. He was also the first person to orbit the earth in 1962, when he actually had to manually fly the spacecraft back to earth after malfunctions occurred. I was just a kid at the time, but I do remember all of this taking place. John Glenn also holds the record for being the oldest astronaut to be launched into space in 1998 at age 77.

The John Glenn Astronomy Park is located on top of an open hill, minus trees, in order to provide a good and unobstructed view of a black nighttime sky for proper stargazing. This offers a first-time event for some folks, especially those from an urban setting, where glowing lights obscure the ability to see the stars clearly.

The observatory offers a sizeable area with a high, solid fence circling around in a “ring” fashion, with seating available along the inner circle, which further assists in preventing any sort of “light-interference.” I’ve talked to folks who have been there on a perfect night, who said it was a spectacular experience, especially when matters are enhanced by looking though a telescope.

Ginny and I met Brad Hoehne, a biologist at Hocking Hills State Park who handles matters for the John Glenn Astronomy Park, which offers a lot of nightly programs, weather permitting, of course. Ginny and I were joined by other visitors waiting for the night sky to clear, but it never did.

Brad took us into a nearby building which held a row of big telescopes (some with high-tech cameras), and pointed out how the roof was ingeniously designed to slide forward in order to fully expose the night sky. One thing is for certain: being there on a perfectly cloudless night is definitely on my bucket-list!

Ginny and I would then leave for our next nightlife adventure, which was also “weather pending,” but fortunately for us, the impending rain held off.

It was a very dark night, indeed, as we slowly drove down winding roads and had to stop once for a herd of deer crossing the road. At the edge of the glow from our headlights, I spotted an outstanding whitetail buck which was staring back at us. Southeastern Ohio is known for growing some big deer!

Our destination was Butterfly Ridge, a privately owned and managed butterfly conservation center operated by Chris Kline and his wife, Kris Kline (it was easy for me to keep their first names straight). The property has been in Chris Kline’s family since 1863, and he and Kris have created a very unique and specialized habitat devoted to not only butterflies, but moths as well. In fact, Ginny and I were there to do some nighttime “mothing,” a new experience for us that we had both been looking forward to.

We met Kris Kline in the parking lot, and she gave us a Gator (ATV) ride on trails through an amazing mixture of woodland and prairie grassland habitat to a hilltop with glowing lights. Chris Kline was standing in front of a large, white bedsheet stretched on a wooden “goalpost” framework, which had a black light glowing on one side and a mercury-vapor light on the other side.

The air around Chris in the glowing light was filled with flying moths, and both sides of the white sheet were covered with them. Chris was carefully identifying and photographing individual moths (he has written “A Beginner’s Guide to Mothing”), which happened to land briefly during a frenzy of animated and colorful fluttering about.

As Ginny and I approached the lighted action, we even watched where we were stepping because moths were everywhere, even on the ground. We managed to take some moth pictures ourselves, but we sure needed assistance in the identification of most, many of which we had never seen before. Ginny managed to take the picture of a splendid bright pink and yellow moth called a “Rosy Maple Moth.”

Chris later let us know that he had photographed and identified 101 moth species during our visit. It was a fantastic experience to witness, and I’m pretty sure Ginny and I will be putting up our own white sheet and lights in our backyard!

According to Chris, if you plant it, they will come, and his property is proof positive of that fact. Butterfly Ridge, besides mothing, offers daily butterfly walks, ATV tours, hiking trails, a caterpillar house, a gift shop and a tree house to allow a bird's-eye view of outstanding butterfly and moth habitat.

The rain held off until we were returning to our cabin and completely lost our cell connection that was directing us. On a very dark and rainy night on hilly and twisting roads, we got turned around a bit, but eventually found our way, making it yet another nightlife adventure in the Hocking Hills.

Before we headed home the next day, I had to try another adventure. I was curious about the sauna pods I had seen advertised. This is a pair of large, barrel-shaped cedar saunas that have a floor-to-ceiling fisheye window facing a wooded valley. I truly appreciate a sauna, but my only experience in the past had been the type having water poured on hot rocks to create a very moist and hot atmosphere.

The sauna pods use dry heat only, and it was something I wanted to check out. Ginny, on the other hand, isn’t fond of saunas, especially when it is already 90 degrees and humid outside, so I was doing this adventure solo.

All I can say, folks, is that a “dry sauna” brings on a big sweat in a real hurry, and I made sure to drink lots of water, as advised beforehand, because I was sure sweating a whole bunch of fluids. Afterwards, when I got dressed, I noticed I had to tighten my belt up a notch (I do believe I shrunk a bit).

The 90-degree weather actually seemed on the cool side, and ultimately, I felt very refreshed. I wouldn’t hesitate to try that again.

All too soon, our sojourn to Hocking Hills was over, but it had been a very fulfilling time getting to know some wonderful folks.

Email freelance outdoors writer Tom Lounsbury at tlounsburyoutdoors@gmail.com.