We had a long day of driving ahead of us, but we took a few hours in the morning to check out "one of Kentucky's finest natural sites"
A short but steep hike led us to the bottom of the natural stone bridge.
A squeeze through the rocks
and we were at the top!
A short hike around the top led us to a good view of the bridge. It was an extremely foggy morning, and even at this hour, you could still see wisps of clouds in the trees! It was beautiful!
In all directions!!
There are two methods of getting to the top. The mile long hike that we took, or a sky lift! Unfortunately, the sky lift didn't open until 10am, and we needed to be on the road by 10:30am, so we opted for the hike.
However, when the boys saw the sky lift... they **really** wanted to ride it. And when we were passing by it, ready to hike down, we realized it had just started running.
So Dave very kindly took one for the team. The boys and I took the sky lift down while he hiked the mile to the bottom, retrieved the car, and then met us at the bottom of the skylift.
But, on his hike down, he found an incredibly cool cave, filled with fog, and a low cold breeze blowing from a crevice in the rock. And we just had to see that! So, after he picked us up, he drove us back to the short hike to the cave, and we got to enjoy that as well!
Total miles: 520
Hours Driving: 9 hours
State Count: 9 - Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia
This was definitely our longest trip on the way out. We planned a few sight seeing stops along the way to break up the trip.
●●● Nada Tunnel
This tunnel was very close to Natural Bridge State Resort and seemed like a good way to start off our trip.
It is extremely tight - 12 feet wide and 13 feet tall and looks like it was hand hewn with pick axe!
The tunnel was really neat to see, but a side benefit of seeing it is that it took us along some incredibly back country roads that we would have never seen otherwise.
Although Google only said the trip was 15 minutes out of our way, it seemed like it took waaay longer than that... probably because we drove much slower than the posted speed limit on those curvy back roads!
●●● A quick trip to Ohio
Once we got back on the interstate and took a look at our route, we realized that we were going to be minutes from Ohio. Having never found a geocache in Ohio, and neither of the boys having ever been, we figured it would be worth our while to drive through Huntington, cross the river and cross off another state!
●●● Lunch at Hill Billy Hotdogs
While in Huntington, it was time for lunch. Long ago, when I was scrolling through all of the possible side road trips, I found this place called Hill Billy Hotdogs. It seemed highly improbable that we would be driving through Huntington right at the time for lunch, but low and behold ... here we were.
A quick stop for some hotdogs, and an amusing look at the variety of paraphernalia hanging from the walls certain broke up the tediousness of our drive!
The most amusing of all was the fact that, in West Virginia, you are allowed to eat roadkill. A sign at Hill Billy's confirmed this with "Hit it on the run? We'll put it on a bun!"
After a much longer stop in Huntington the expected due to the Ohio geocache, Hill Billy's and a DNF geocache in Huntington, we got back on the highway... but got off at the next stop for a quick photo at the West Virginia welcome center!
The road from West Virginia was beautiful and green, and long and twisted. We finally arrived in Virginia around mid-day. We had to, of course, get a quick Welcome Center shot!
Again, in my Google planning from home, I had found through roadtripper.com a cool stop along the drive at "Humbpack Bridge". Not sure if it was worth the five minute diversion off the road (we were ready to be home in our hotel), we decided we'd go ahead and check it out.
And it was SUPER COOL!
This is one of the few remaining covered bridges in the United States. It was hand built in 1842 and used until 1929. According to Wikipedia: The supports incorporate a unique curved multiple kingpost-truss system that is not found in any other surviving wooden bridge in the U.S. The bridge is an original and completely unique design not duplicated anywhere else.
It was rediscovered and restored in the 1950s and restored. When we visited, the bridge was in the middle of a reworking and had caution tape across the front, but that didn't prevent the boys from using it to cross to the other side for a geocache!
This location is also one of the LOVEwork Virginia locations.
Get it? :o)
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