Year 5, October 19th-22nd, 2020: Vacation!!!! Without Children!!!! Day 2 of 3

 Wednesday, hiking day. See details in handwritten notes with my personal affects. Stories will appear as captions on the photos.

The "no selfies" guy at his finest at the Big Clifty Falls.

Selfie at the Little Clifty Falls I believe.

Well, my doctor said to get more exercise into my week! I had a lot of good cardio trying to go up and down these steep, slippery inclines!

Looking east from Clifty Inn at Clifty Falls State Park towards Madison, Indiana, located in a great alcove along the Ohio River.

Boneyard Grill. I couldn't eat it all! And the fries probably had some coating on them, but they were really good. Smothered chicken. Frozen "seasonal" veggies. And the yummiest fountain Cherry Coke was a great way to satisfy my thirst after a huge day of hiking.

Fried pickle bites and a huge fried pork tenderlion for the Big 'Un.

Yes, as seen in the negative reviews, the coal plant was next door to Clifty Falls. But it didn't smell bad and didn't even block the views of Madison. We were fine with it.

Kids stayed up late after their last swim of the day and played Risk, the Board Game, and others.

After breakfast in our room provided by ourselves from home, we headed out on a short trail near the inn to a short tower overlooking the Ohio River and the town of Madison.

I thought the ground was interesting here, all compacted like this. It was an easy walk.

A little overlook.

A tad foggy still. Looking to the east. I was definitely anxious to get up and out to see the fall colors! Now that I'm writing this a full week afterwards, I think we were a tad early for the colors. Here in Indianapolis, about half to 2/3 of the leaves are now on the ground but all the trees are rich in color still.

Looking west. This is when I realized that I'm going to have to mess with my aperature a lot to get the right pop of color. This is the smaller aperature, so less light coming into the lens.

This is with a bigger aperature, so more light coming in. I think that's how it goes. Point is, it's a difference. And occasionally I had to go even smaller to achieve the colors I wanted.

Yes, Clifty Inn is right next to a coal plant. It was not smelly or dirty or even in our view.

Leftovers of the first trails or a forestry house? Hm,....

First parking spot. We saw a few families there having lunch or a get together, including some Mennonites.

Four waterfalls, three parking spots, shorter distances on the trails this year because we just couldn't handle all the topography. All the trails were damp/wet/muddy and sometimes steep inclined. Trail 3 to Hoffman Falls.  We could have gone to all the falls without having to park again, but it was just too much.

Part of the bridge.

Ah, it's the top of the Hoffman Falls.

Climbed a bit higher and there it is.

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Our second stop was actually at the northern entrance of the park because I needed a restroom. Oh, and we had had lunch at that Poplar Grove parking spot. Indiana has a ton of great parks!

Headingto Clifty Falls and Little Clifty Falls.

Clifty Falls

We saw this type of rock wall in Madison as well. I'm sure they've been around for more than 100 years. And yet, there they are. So uniquely placed!

You can see the difference between the shale and the limestone.

The trail took us to a dead end under an alcove.

Then Jared became obsessed with this airplane flying around! We think it was just someone practicing some stunts or how to fly in general. It wasn't marked well on Jared's app and it had a unique underwing paint scheme.

Little Clifty Falls

Huge tree being held up by another tree (see next pic).

Only being held up by this other tree.

We were now at our final set of trails to the Tunnel and Tunnel Falls.

This manmade cave/tunnel was still open so we did it! It was muddy, but definitely passable if you stayed along the walls. Bats do live in here when it's closed to the public in the winter time. The floor mud was a light tan color. I kept thinking maybe it was original bat poo. We used our phone flashlights. I felt bad for putting my hands on the walls and leaving my scent behind. Oh well. At one point, if we had turned off our flashlights, I think we would have been in total darkness. It wasn't a long tunnel though. We did have to duck down, but it was pretty wide.

We decided to use the trail around it when we came back up.

I took a gob more pictures but didn't want to bore you. We were probably out for about 4 hrs, just plodding along, taking our time, knowing our limits. It was much harder than Turkey Run 2 years ago and 1 year ago. Probably because we walked a lot the day before. We talked a bit on the trail about many things. I'm sure I wrote about it in my journal. But here is the view of Madison at about 4pm or so from the Clifty Inn. That bridge takes you over to Kentucky.

Kentucky Hills

Big birds, vultures I think.

Awesome stonework.

Coal plant again, but see how I could take numerous photos without it being in the way? We didn't go to the opposite side (west) though, so maybe it blocks the view more over there.

Then we drove through the park from South to North because Jared wanted pictures of all the tree tunnels. We took it slow, 15mph or so. The north entrance comes off on State Route 62 that goes into modern Madison.

We didn't drive on the extra loop through the campground area though.

I love how there is wood barriers rather than metal so it blends in more with the woods.

We also drove back to the Clifty Inn from north to south in the park. It was darker of course, but so quiet. We would drive it one more time going north before we drove back to Historic Madison when we left on Thursday. We could drive for hours like this. The infamous "Sunday drives" of old.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel exhausted. We both had our alone times with our screens and then watched some Star Trek via Amazon via Jared's phone because he didn't want to use the Inn's wifi on his laptop. I know, I know, he's a bit picky with all of that. And we went to bed early of course. I didn't really get to sleep in much because I'm used to just 6 hrs of sleep, so come 5 am, I was awake. I snoozed until 7, but it was hard to keep trying to sleep after that. Oh well. Now I know. I was becoming mentally exhausted, too, because I wasn't used to talking to an adult all day! And trying not to get upset over the little things that bother me that were starting to build up (see tomorrow's post.) But Wednesday was a great day! Warm, like 75 degrees, but we saw some beautiful things, including a deer on our way back from dinner. I didn't want the kids with us, but I was stating to feel restless and useless like I needed to be doing more. But I had nothing else to do after reading and doing my Bible study and email. Weird feeling. Onwards to the final day of our trip.

The End