Towner's Woods — Attraction in Franklin Township

I have been coming here off and on for 35 years. It has been quite an experience. Its a beautiful park with multiple biomes. With a almost choose your own adventure throughout the entire place. Which is hard to explain, because many parks don't have this. There's large areas of woods with valleys and hills everywhere. You have some areas of just pine trees. There is a large bird and bug sanctuary that is more like an open meadow setting of tightly knit low lying vegetation. You have a few areas where some paths go as well that takes you through a few swamps / bogs if you wish to go. There is a large portion of the park devoted to lakeside trails. There is also a large grassy hill and meadow located deep in the middle of the park. The hill is a great place to sled during the winter too. It also has a bike trail!

Sadly though, from working for sometime in the Summit county Cuyahoga National Park for some time. I found out that Portage doesn't get as much funding for their parks anymore unfortunately. Unless it's a Metro park funded by a city. This park had SO many other amenities throughout the years go away. Many pavilions were destroyed and never replaced. It had a shuffle ball court, or it was botchy ball. (Its been gone for awhile). Ring toss too I believe. They used to offer tours of the old train station in the parking lot. A couple of the trails were shutdown for some reason..

Why do I say all this? I say it because this absolutely beautiful and unique park right here could be one of the flag ship parks for Portage County. Add back some of the missing attractions, add some work out stations throughout the trails, a playground some where, a second or third bathroom placed in the middle or the end. After that you would have hands down one of the BEST parks in Western Portage County. (Aside from reviving Mogadore Sate Park) It's one of the only true Woodland parks that people from Kent or Ravenna can really enjoy, even though its in Franklin Twp. If they continued the park around Lake Rockwell, it could be one of the largest walking parks in the local area. After i go through some memory cards i will upload...

We have rode our bikes many times through Towners Woods, but have never stopped. We were recently looking for some hiking options we could do in the winter that were close by. We decided to go to Towners Woods since we have never been here before. Very nice park with plenty of hiking trails. There is a restroom available near the parking lot. But I did not see any picnic tables nearby. There were some picnic tables in some pavilions along the trail, but that is not convenient to your car. The trails were very well maintained and usable even in the winter. There are many trails, more than you would typically attempt in a single visit. They also have a large sled hill that was being used by a few folks. But it does require a short hike to get to it. Unfortunately the lakes are owned by the City of Akron. You can see them, but you cannot get close to them. They are completely fenced off. There are plenty of fantastic views of the lakes along the way. We definitely want to visit when the trees have leaves. We will certainly be back. We want to hike the other areas we didn't get to. I am deducting one star due to the lack of...

Navigating to, and locating the parking lot for Towner's Wood Park if you have never been here can be confusing. Keep going past the 'road closed' and the 'bridge closed' sign, and the parking lot is accessible before the closed bridge. Please keep an eye out for turtles on the road here. On our first time making it out here this year we ran into stopped traffic while some park visitors were helping a turtle cross the road. It was nice to see people helping.

This was a fun hike, with lots of side trails, water access, and pretty views of the forest and watershed. We saw a lot of birds and marine life. The bugs were a little dense during our mid July visit but we left the park free or any ticks! We encountered a few other friendly hikers and also some dog walkers. This is also a popular area for biking, running, and triathlon training. While here we saw a lot of bikers on the bike trail that we could observe from some of the hiking trails.

There seem to be several alternate trails and paths you can take to loop, we plan on coming back to explore some of the trails and side paths that we did not have time to check out on...