While we are in Ohio we have been spending a lot of time in Butler, Ohio.  Butler is not a famous town or a large town – it only has 930 people.  The town is named after General William Butler, a Mexican War hero, although I couldn’t find any evidence he was from Butler or had ever visited Butler.  There is a bar, a Dodge dealership, a restaurant, a couple of churches, and a gas station.  So why have we been spending time here in Butler?  Because it’s where the campground is.  We had intended to spend just a week here, like we did in June, but we have ended up spending all three weeks we’ve been in Ohio here in Butler.

We like the campground, which is small and very quiet especially during the week.  It costs the same as Alum Creek State Park but has full hook-ups so we don’t have to move in order to dump the tanks.

The campground is also next to the B&O Bike Trail so we have been taking full advantage of that.  My parents live in Lexington, which is just 10 miles away on the bike trail and then just a couple more miles to their house (a couple of miles uphill).  So we can ride to their house in an hour from our campsite.  We have done this several times a week.  On days when we haven’t felt like riding we walk to Butler on the bike trail – in the opposite direction – a mile and a half.

We enjoy the farms and small town scenery on the B&O Bike Trail.  We see redbirds, cardinals, bluebirds, and goldfinches every day we walk.  The wildflowers have also been very pretty, even if we are allergic to most of them.  In Butler we like to walk to the end of the trail (mile 0) and have even walked beyond it.  There is a barrier at the end of the trail, but there is also a mowed path beyond it where they hope to extend the trail someday.

Butler has one restaurant, the Wiffletree Restaurant and we tried it this last week.  It had a John Wayne theme, which was fun.  The menu is extensive, with the daily special posted on a blackboard.  There was a small salad bar but everything on it was fresh.  We ate there with my parents and the food was good.  The best part of the meal was dessert – homemade pies.  We tried the tollhouse and pecan pies and the applecrisp.  The restaurant is pretty busy, especially at breakfast and lunch.  It is closed on Wednesdays.

Butler has a couple of parks.  Memorial Park is dedicated to Veterans but also contains a small plaque in memory of the town’s doctor for almost 50 years, Elizabeth Reed, “Dr. Betty.”  The other park has a playground for the kids and is located on the end of the bike trail.  It looked like a popular hangout for the town’s teenagers as well.

One interesting bit of connection for me:  the Dodge dealership in Butler, Weekley Chrysler, was the place where I got my first car in 1981.  It was a Plymouth Horizon and I drove it until the engine fell out (literally when I went over some railroad tracks too fast).  When Tom and I needed a replacement hubcap for our Dodge Ram truck, we called Weekley’s and they had it for us the next day.

Tom and I like small towns.  We like the atmosphere in small towns and feeling like we can know the place in a short amount of time.  Butler is a gem of a small town in Ohio.