Hiking Team: Dave Miller, Rosie Miller
Date: June 1, 2025
This Greene County Parks Trail is located parallel to US Route 35 with Little Beaver Creek meandering on one side and the bike path from Dayton to Xenia on the other side. The 3.5-mile trail (of which we hiked 2.5 miles) is very diverse – surrounded by the creek, wetlands, forest, meadows, fen and prairie. We parked at A.J. Nutter Park on Factory Road, located the trailhead just off the bike trail and hiked westward. The trail was shady the entire time and twice, briefly, re-joined the bike path. The creek was very clean and beautiful (Photo #2) and two observation decks were built to stop, sit down and enjoy the view of the creek, the birds and nature. We saw five different deer and at two different locations, I slowly hiked within 10 to 15 feet past the deer (Photos#3 & #4). They looked at me but didn’t run off. My favorite part of the hike was when a small bunny hopped onto the trail about ten yards ahead of us. He looked at us for a while then hopped off. A couple of seconds later, about ten yards further, a squirrel did the same thing. Thirty yards farther down the trail a deer just stood there for a long time looking at us while we slowly approached. We definitely saw a lot of wildlife on this hike.
