Best Places for Outdoor Recreation in Ashtabula County
With miles of hiking and biking trails, lush parks, marshes, and Lake Erie coastal access, Ashtabula County offers ideal opportunities to get out in nature.
With miles of hiking and biking trails, lush parks, marshes, and Lake Erie coastal access, Ashtabula County offers ideal opportunities to get out in nature.
There’s plenty of room to breathe and appreciate the beauty of nature in Ohio’s largest county, whether you are angling on a sparkling lake, gliding over a freshwater marsh that meets Lake Erie, or hitting the trail through unbreakable forests.
Pymatuning Reservoir on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border will get fishing enthusiasts hook, line, and sinker. With five boat launches and two boat concessions, it’s easy to find a peaceful place to drop a line in the glistening 17,088-acre lake, which also harbors perch, crappie, largemouth and smallmouth bass, and channel catfish. At the southern end, Pymatuning State Park has one of the largest campgrounds in Ohio, plus 57 cabins packed with the comforts of home.
Geneva State Park raises the bar with a luxury lodge in addition to camping and cabin rentals, but it’s the expansive view of Lake Erie that captivates visitors. The entire length of the park hugs the shoreline, where you can stretch out on the sand, go for a swim, and even soar over the marshy wetlands of Cowles Creek with Lake Erie Canopy Tours.
The Western Reserve Greenway Trail offers another way to get moving. The paved trail follows a disused rail bed that once transported iron ore by train to the lakeside town of Ashtabula. The tree-lined route is now used for recreational rambling through the rural countryside for nearly 43 miles — 27 of them in Ashtabula County.