Hidden Cleveland: Geauga Park District's Observatory Park

The parking lot is lit like a high school football stadium under a few concentrated spotlights. It’s an odd welcome to something called a Dark Sky Park — a preserved area with low levels of light pollution. The 1,100-acre park is one of 25 like it in the U.S. aimed at fostering astronomical education and enjoyment. Behind a planetarium and observatory where volunteers and community members peer into telescopes, a walkable planetary trail carves a path through a marshy field. Concrete circles that pop up every so often in the path represent the planets of our solar system, and kiosks display info on gravitational pull and more. Further down the trail, education makes way for experience. Heads tilting high and the sound of pebbles against your shoes acting as metronome, the little lights consuming the dark expanse above are mesmerizing — and make the Orion constellation’s three-star-studded belt hard to distinguish. But haunted by the white-and-purple ghostlike mass of the Milky Way, the stars, the planets and even this little patch of Geauga County seem to blur together. 10610 Clay St., Montville Township, 440-279-0820, geaugaparkdistrict.org