Ohio Just Unveiled an Official Candy Trail

Ohiois apparently gunning to be nicknamed the sweetest state in America. Back in 2015, the Butler County Visitors Bureau unleashed a 12-stop officialOhio Donut Trail. Now, just two counties north, the Miami County Visitors & Convention Bureau has unveiled its own sugary trek: the Ohio Buckeye Candy Trail.

Though a list and map of the trail can befound on Miami County’s website, the Ohio Buckeye Candy Trail actually features 31 sweet shops statewide “throughout Ohio’s major cities and charming towns.” If you follow the numbers on the map, the route starts with a single Cincinnati destination before working its way north through Dayton all the way up past Bowling Green. From there, about a half-dozen stops aretightly packed in the Columbus areabefore splitting off toward Cambridge up through Walnut Creek. Then it’s over to Ashland, back toward Canton, and over toward Youngstown before wrapping things up with a few final stops along Lake Erie, including, of course, Cleveland.

However, this trail is about more than simply sugar-crashing your way across the Buckeye State: It also pays tribute to one of the state’s most iconic candies—fittingly called the “buckeye.”Buckeye candy, which is named after its resemblance to nuts from the Ohio buckeye tree, is a peanut butter fudge ball that has been partially dipped in chocolate—leaving a little bit of peanut butter color peeking out of the top. For the record, no actual buckeye nuts are harmed in the making of a buckeye candy… probably in part because they are poisonous to humans.

Of course, yes, eating what are essentially chocolate-dipped peanut butter balls at 31 stops is a pretty aggressive move even for someone with the most serious of sweet toothes (sweet teeth?). But has anyone ever gone to the Midwest to eat healthily? And hey, if you need to break things up a bit, there’s always that doughnut trail you could divert yourself onto.