Traveling with bug-crazy kids this summer? Ohio’s new Hocking Hills Butterfly Trail offers a family-friendly outdoors experience that’s educational and fun. Just download your printable map, passport, and butterfly coloring book before your trip. Then you can follow the map to the 14 butterfly stations and mark them off on your passport.
The trail includes 14 locations where visitors can stop and look for butterflies. To make this more appealing to screen generations, each place has a selfie station where you can pose in front of massive wings accurately depicting the featured butterfly species. Wing stations are open from sunrise to sunset (after that, you’ll turn into a moth.) Visitors will also learn about butterfly habitats, lifecycle, and food sources.
“Hocking Hills Butterfly Trail encourages stewardship of our natural areas by demonstrating how important pollinators are to the wellbeing of the very thing visitors come to here to experience: nature and wildlife,” Explore Hocking Hills Executive Director Karen Raymore said in a statement. “A diverse group of partners came together to implement the trail, creating outstanding visitor experiences that educate while making each stop fun and interactive.”
At the Hocking Hills Regional Welcome Center, visitors can witness the whole monarch butterfly lifecycle. From May to August, the young caterpillars feed and prepare for some chrysalis time. They emerge as monarchs between late August and October. Guests can participate in monarch migration research by tagging the butterflies and bidding them adios as they begin migrating to Mexico.
The Butterfly Ridge Conservation Center is another special stop along the trail. There, you can take guided hikes across the pollinator-friendly prairie, forest, and gardens. Check the schedule for special workshops, and pick up seeds to plant a butterfly habitat once you go home. Some summer Saturday nights also feature moth safaris.
The 14 featured butterflies are the monarch, great-spangled fritillary, orange sulfur, silver-spotted skipper, clouded sulfur, red admiral, pipevine swallowtail, viceroy, red-spotted purple, pearl crescent, hackberry emperor, eastern tiger swallowtail, spicebush swallowtail, and eastern comma.
The Hocking Hills are located about 50 miles southeast of Columbus and are known for various outdoor activities. You can camp, glamp, kayak, canoe, ride horses, stargaze, rock climb, rappel, and do lots of other fun things — all while keeping an eye out for butterflies.