Butler County

After the rains, a flooded road that led around the lake toward Reily (courtesy Reily Historical Society).

This is the story of a failed state park and its lake. To tell it faithfully, though, I need to tell you how I came across it. To do that, I need to first beg forgiveness, because I fibbed 44 summers ago. 

First, I encountered the ruins of curious concrete edifices in the creek bed that were clearly relics from another time. Old sycamores and silver maples grew thickly through cracked concrete. A tall tower stood there, orphaned, in what seemed the most out-of-the-way place. Not 40 yards away, Indian Creek bent into a deep pool beneath sheltering box elders. That leads to the second reason for the memory: It was there that I hooked a smallmouth bass as long as my forearm and thick as a pillow from the smallest of waters.

Bill Pyles taught himself the art of steel blademaking while he recuperated from surgery, and ended up as a champion on the competition series Forged in Fire, thanks to Damascus steel blades he created such as the one above.

Butler Rural Electric Cooperative member Bill Pyles gave himself a valuable piece of advice after a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: “Never say never.”

“After three days of (watching them make blades), I thought, ‘I bet I can do that,’” says Bill, a self-proclaimed tech geek who works for a company in California. 

As it turned out, he was right.

Bill has a wife, Judy (who now refers to herself as a forge widow), four kids, four dogs, and two cats. He’s been a volunteer firefighter for Milford Township for 23 years and is also a part-time beekeeper. He seems to excel at anything he sets his mind to.

After he talked to his wife, he purchased his first small forge for $150. He already had everything else he needed.

Alpaca-shorn yarns

When a young woman approached Robbie and Carrie Davis about making the yarn for her wedding shawl, they readily obliged. The bride-to-be wanted the yarn to contain fleece from a specific alpaca, so they created an alpaca-silk blend especially for her.

A cria is a baby alpaca, and the farm’s name was inspired by the couple’s years of alpaca industry experience. They acquired their first alpacas in 2006 and soon began breeding and showing the animals at fairs with help from their son, Jessie, who is now 20 and an aviation technology student at Sinclair Community College. Alpacas don’t shed, so Robbie and Carrie became adept at shearing. 

Mimi's Donuts

In the kitchen of Jupiter Coffee and Donuts in Fairfield, Ohio, co-owner Cindy Wallis proudly shows off a feathery circle of sweetness — warm, luscious, and oozing with classic glazed-donut flavor. 

“Donuts sell here. They just sell,” says Terri Niederman, owner of the Donut Spot, also in Fairfield. “It’s unbelievable.”

Nine shops, in cooperation with the Butler County Convention and Visitors Bureau, launched the trail in 2016 to boost sales and draw visitors. Participants secure a Donut Trail Passport and have it stamped at each location. A completed passport earns the bearer a souvenir T-shirt.