With lots of hikes, caves, and natural bridges/arches, this is a park with a lot more versatility than many others! The park also has a number of other activities that we didn’t explore - mini golf, a swimming pool, kayak/canoe rentals for the lake, and more.
Read MoreWe spent four full days (and five nights) at Carter Caves State Resort Park. We enjoyed all seven of the park’s hiking trails (about 14.5 miles in total), which varied in length from small connector trails up to 8.5 miles. We also hiked 2 of the 5 multi-use trails, exploring 4.5 miles out of 16.5 miles of those. We visited all 6 of the park’s natural bridges/arches, a significant amount to be housed so close together in one park! In addition to the hikes, the park has amazing caving options - from three guided cave tours to two self-guided options - and I’d recommend you check out our post on that if you’re interested. We really enjoyed the hikes at this park and would recommend others visit!
Read MoreWe spent four full days (and five nights) at Carter Caves State Resort Part and enjoyed five of the park’s caves during our visit. We took three guided tours, explored two caves entirely on our own as self-guided adventures, and didn’t do some of the more intense caving options. If you have time to do hiking and check out other aspects of the park like the multiple natural bridges/arches, I’d recommend you check out our other posts. If you want to learn just about the cave options, this post is for you! And it won’t disappoint: there are really awesome, unique cave options at Carter Caves State Park!
Read MoreOn our fourth day at Carter Caves State Park, we hiked the longest hiking trail at the park - Carter Caves Cross Country Trail (“4 Cs Trail"), though we amended our route a bit to avoid doubling back on a shared section of the trail with Three Bridges Trail. We created an equally long hike, clocking in at 8.5 miles. We also had an unexpected situation with one of our pups that ended well but was not exactly how we wanted to end our trip.
Read MoreOn our third day at Carter Caves State Park, we hiked Cave Branch Trail (3.1 miles); toured the historic Saltpeter Cave, which played a role in gunpowder production during the War of 1812, by lantern light; hiked Raven Bridge Trail to check out one of the park’s natural bridges/arches and looped back on part of Three Bridges Trail and Rockhouse Trail (1.5 miles).
Read MoreOn our second full day at Carter Caves State Park, we hiked Three Bridges Trail (3.5 miles), Horn Hollow Trail (1.5 miles), Natural Bridge Trail (0.5 miles), explored two self-guided caves on our own: Horn Hollow Cave and Laurel Cave, enjoyed seeing 4 of the park’s beautiful, naturally occurring bridges/arches, and grabbed lunch at the park’s restaurant, Tierney’s Cavern.
Read MoreIn addition to traveling to the park, getting settled in, and enjoying our first day of activities, we had several expected animal adventures. Keep reading for the tale! In the realm of adventuring, we toured two guided caves - Cascade Cave and X Cave, and hiked two trails, Box Canyon Trail and Mulligan’s Trail, the former of which is home to one of the five natural arches/bridges within the park.
Read MoreBurkes Garden is an unexpected find.
A couple of years ago, Dustin was looking online at a map of our greater region - Southwestern Virginia - and spotted a place on the map that looked geologically interesting. And that is how Burkes Garden came to be on our radar.
Read MoreHaving exhausted most of the trails in Breaks Interstate Park, we considered finding a new place to hike on our last full day and found a few trails that piqued our interest in Pikeville, KY, at Bob Amos Park. I already knew that Pikeville was having its annual festival (none other than Hillbilly Days) but figured a hike nearby would be okay and also allow us an opportunity to check out Pikeville. When we looked online for park info in the morning and - thanks to Google - saw that the park was exponentially busier at that moment (at 8am) than normal, we realized the entire area was probably tied up with the festival. So, change of plans.
Read MoreWith temperatures set to soar to the mid-to-upper 80s (yes, in Virginia and Kentucky in mid-April!), we planned a morning hike and an afternoon drive in Breaks Interstate Park. Like the prior day, we looked at the trail map and concocted our own version of a multi-trail loop: Tower Tunnel Overlook (0.2 miles) to Prospector Trail (1.5 miles) to Ridge Trail (0.5 miles), and 0.8 miles back along the road to our car for a total of a 3-mile hike over the course of 2 hours 15 minutes.
Read MoreWe decided to start the morning off with our own created loop trail route, which we became quite good at during our time at Breaks Interstate Park! This loop-of-our-own-creation was a combination of four park trails, totaling 3 miles.
Read MoreWe decided to check out a bunch of the scenic overlooks to enjoy them and also identify good spots for sunrise and sunset trips in the future. We started first at Towers Overlook, inside the park entrance, and got our first real look at the huge massive rock formation that is left as softer rocks eroded away over time. The Towers, as it is called, jets out from nearby mountains and is almost entirely encircled by the Russell Fork River. The general formation looks a lot like the more well-known Horseshoe Bend in Utah. In fact, both of these canyons are about 1,000 feet deep.
Read MoreWhen you embark on a trip with three dogs to a state park where you need to bring your own linens and food, packing the car is a noteworthy activity. A successful car loading looks like this: all of us in the SUV with the ability to see out the back window. That, of course, is the finished product.
Read MoreBreaks Interstate Park, located in a rural section of the mid-Atlantic on the border of Virginia and Kentucky is smack dab in a beautiful, mountainous region with undulating mountains and hills spanning out across the two states, and a 1,000 foot deeply cut gorge called Breaks Canyon. The river that runs through the canyon is one of the deepest east of the Mississippi, one of several places colloquially called The Grand Canyon of the East.
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