Jim Zehringer, Director of Ohio Department of Natural Resouces

Let me start out by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would recommend that it be available at all of our state park gift shops. I really enjoyed the history lessons that you conveyed about each area. For example, I never knew about the distance fact on water flow about New Bremen or the counterfeit house on the Ohio River. I could go on and on. I was also very interested in the condition of the trail at various sections and in seeing how we can improve areas of our state parks that involves the BT. Since coming to DNR in 2011, we have made trail head signage, safety, confidence markers, and restrooms, a top priority. I would be curious on getting your feedback on how we're doing. I appreciate your passion for the outdoors and you would have made a fine Naturalist or Park Ranger.

Patty Carro, Freelance Writer, Novelist

Ohio's Buckeye Trail winds across 1,444 miles of dirt and bike paths, city streets, rural roads, forests and pastures - all ostensibly marked by painted "blue blazes" to guide the way. Unlike the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails on the east and west coasts, respectively, which meander vertically from end to end, the Buckeye Trail is a loop approximating the perimeter of Ohio. If you start in Dayton, for instance, you can plan a hike that finishes in Dayton. That is exactly what wilderness adventurer Andy Niekamp did over 88 challenging days in the spring of 2011. In so doing, he became the first to complete a solo thru-hike of the Buckeye Trail at its current length of 1,444 miles. What's more, "Captain Blue," as he is known on the trail, chronicled his daily progress via a blog that eventually became a 196-page book: Captain Blue on the Blue Blazes. It is a marvelous account of one man's journey.

Irene Szabo, North Star Magazine Editor

Dayton's Andy Niekamp launched his 2011 hike anyway, even though, as most of our readers know, a trail that forms a complete circle of Ohio must necessarily include a lot of flat land in the north and a lot of civilization, too. But don't we also know that it utilizes numerous state parks and segments of the hilly Wayne National Forest? And readers of these pages have seen that long historic canal routes up and down each side of the state offer many miles of trail, too. I myself am a bit of a canal geek, so have enjoyed reconstructed canal locks near Napoleon on the west side of the state, and at the north end of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park on the east side and more canalside trail in the Zoar area. And anything historic pleases me; after all, it was near the Miami and Erie Canal in Defiance that Joan Young and I sampled a pork brains sandwich in an old Prohibition-era speakeasy. As Andy himself says, "The Buckeye Trail ... is about discovering Ohio."