Hocking Hills State Park

The main reason we came to this part of Ohio is because the fellow at the State Welcome Center told us that this area is one of the most beautiful in the state.  He highly recommended that we visit the Hocking Hills area. We had planned to do so earlier in the week, but the rain definitely changed our plans.  Today we woke to only a partly cloudy day and decided that if we were ever going to see it, we should go now. The scenic features of Hocking Hills State Park are carved in sandstone deposited over 350 million years ago in the warm shallow sea that covered the area.
The area was described in the New York Times as "Tucked into Ohio's southeast corner...a densely wooded region of rugged slopes and cool hollows, of spring-fed creeks and cascading waterfalls, known as the Hocking Hills."

We spent the afternoon hiking in the Old Man's Cave region of the state park, a deep gorge cut through the sandstone --

Our hike started at the Upper Falls --

Where the water eventually spilled into this calm pool at the bottom of the gorge --

Then on down a ways to the "Devil's Bathtub,"  where the water swirls into a deep hole in the sandstone --

There is some color left in the trees along the lip of the gorge above the recessed caves --

Then you come to Middle Falls.  As you can see the gorge continues to drop down through the sandstone.  That is a bridge across the top of the picture --

Here's Forry another rather strange bridge -- they call it an "A-frame" bridge, but it consists of various v-shaped concrete blocks in the water.  You step from one to the other --

And finally about a mile down the stream, you come to Lower Falls. (There is actually another falls three miles further downstream.)

This rock out-cropping is known as "The Sphinx," but the volunteer at the entrance told us she thought it looked more like an Indian chief.

We followed the stream all the way down to the bottom of the gorge.  But then we had to climb back out.  Fortunately, there were steps.  They were old and uneven, certainly not the standard eight inches.

And then we ran out of steps!  You get to climb this wooden tower and then walk to the left along a sandstone ledge (no handrails!) until you come to a long, dark tunnel of MORE steps --

The woods at the top of the gorge by the parking lot sure looked good to us!  It took us several hours, but it was a spectacular hike.  We were amazed by how full the parking lot was and how many people -- a lot of them kids on a school day -- were there.  One of the staff said that during the summer cars are parked all the way down the highway.

We drove through the rest of the State Park to the town of Logan where we ate a great dinner at the Old Dutch Restaurant before heading back to Auntie Violet in the dark.