Natural Bridge State Park, Kentucky

May 11, 2025

For some reason, a good introductory paragraph did not present itself this week, so let's just dive head first into today's blog post, shall we?

A new state!

Pretty countryside, but looming skies

Since it is springtime, we expect to get rained on more so than usual, and moving day was such a day. No sooner did we back into our new campsite at Natural Bridge State Resort Park in the Red River Gorge area of Kentucky than it started raining--only to stop just as we were finishing up set-up. Guess that makes up for the times where we cheated Mother Nature and left "just in time" or got in "just in time" before rain set in.

Upon entering the camper at our new campsite, we immediately noticed something didn't smell right. In fact, something smelled really bad. Since our previous campground did not have a dump station, and since we left that campground with a rather full gray tank (like pretty much at full capacity), and since we had a lot of bumps and steep hills along our route (do you see where this is going?), we had a bit of an incident where the contents of the gray tank challenged its boundaries.

A little "regurgitation" occurred in the shower while we were traveling. Eeewwww!

Fortunately, the overflow stayed contained in the shower, and after running some fresh water to refill the trap and running some fans on full blast for a while, all was good with the world again.

Once we dried off from the rain and overcame the sewage smell, we noticed that we had a really nice campsite right on the middle fork of the Red River.

This was not our first visit to the Red River Gorge area. We first came here with the kids in March of 2020 for what was supposed to be Spring Break for the twins (and their 21st birthday). Well, Spring Break turned into Perma Break, and everyone knows the rest of that story. We were glad that this time our visit didn't prompt a global pandemic.

We ended up doing some of the same hikes we did last time, and one new one too. The scenery was just as enjoyable this time around, even though we had seen it before.

A new-to-us hike to the Rock Bridge Arch

Stairs cut into the rock--looks like it was a lot of work to make them!

Creation Falls

Another view of Creation Falls

More stairs cut out of rock

Rock Bridge

This is a hike we did in 2020 to Gray's Arch (The arch is kind of hidden in the trees in this picture)

Too early in the season for the wild berries!

That's a lot of stairs to go down

Back up again

Gray's Arch

This was about the spot where I realized that I had not reset the GPS at the beginning of the hike! So I reset it at the arch and guessed at the mileage.

Interesting texture on this rock

Interesting roots on this rock

The Gray's Arch trail had a lot of variety in scenery

Long way down from this cliff

After two days of hiking that challenged our somewhat atrophied Florida flatlander legs, the weather provided a natural break for us in the guise of a rainy day. When the skies cleared on Friday, we checked out a local disc golf course.

Quite a scenic course

It appeared that tombstone "seconds" were used for some of the steps

There was a good mix of holes at this course--some out in the open, and some in the woods

If your disc veered off to the right, you had to basically rappel down a steep ravine...

...into a waterfall (We opted to skip this hole and just admire the view)

The grass was almost waist high in some places

There was a very narrow "fairway" through the trees down into another very steep ravine at this hole (no waterfall here at least). We weren't really interested in playing pinball in the poison ivy, so we skipped this hole as well. Plus, if you did manage to get your disc to the other side of the ravine, there was still like a 20-mile trek to get to the basket.

On Saturday, we and all the weekenders did the popular hike to the natural bridge in the state park we were staying at.

Rick waiting patiently for Julie to take a picture of the stairs going to the top of the natural bridge

Walking on top of the natural bridge

That cliff in the distance was our next stop

This is that "cliff in the distance"

A view of the natural bridge we were walking on moments ago

Many people enjoyed riding the skylift up to the natural bridge. We prefered to torture ourselves with hills and stairs.

Walking along the ridge

Rick was a bit suspicious of Julie taking him here 😉

Not to worry--no leaping happened here!

We had gone up hill quite a ways to get to the ridge, and now it was time for the journey down

It was pretty steep going down the narrow stone steps

We stopped by the lodge to do some stuff online (our internet connection was flaky at the campsite)

Inside the lodge

The rest of our time was spent hanging out on the deck and walking around the campground.

We watched this heron catch and swallow 4 fish!

"Gulp!"

Bigleaf magnolia tree

Middle fork of the Red River

Mother's Day brunch alfresco 🙂

There is a google group email list which can send you an email when there is a new blog post. Instructions for signing up here: Subscribe OR directly join here: Google Group