Clifty Falls State Park: Without kids!

For all times I left my memory card in the computer at home and my cell phone was dying so I wasn't able to capture my own pictures, so all the pics here are borrowed, but some are FAR better than I could have done myself. (so I have linked them from the direct sources)

On Saturday, we ventured from Kentucky to the big state of Indiana.

If ever, I am feeling the slightest bit homesick we found we can travel a short distance to Madison, Indiana. On the way the roads are flater, wider and have farms spotted along the way, just like Wisconsin. Plus they have similar hometown names such as Madison, Seymour and Schofield! Didn't see many cows, but did see lots of fields of corn!

Our goal was to head to Clifty Falls state park. We have been somewhat disappointed in the Kentucky state parks. They don't charge much, if anything, unless you are camping... but they don't have the nice signs or roads either.

We easily found the park, paid our 'out of state' fee of $7 and wandered to the camping area. We miss camping with the kids so we are hoping next year to get some camp time in. This state park had FOUR waterfalls. It was a balmy 97 degrees that day so my goal was to get wet. The park has 8 trails. We decided to start with big Clifty falls first. Trail #8. This pic was taken from trail #2 (I believe) which is a 3 mile one way trail, ending at the water fall then you have to travel another 3 miles back. It was too hot for us to attempt that, so we settled for #7 and 8, which stay on the top parts of the falls.

This was the picture (below) I wanted to take myself when I realized I had not brought the memory card. D'oh! The falls are to our right from this view.
This state park also has a tunnel that was dug to make way for trains but they lost funding so it was abandoned and now is home to bats. We were greeted with this sign at the enterance:

Please Note: Clifty Falls Tunnel is closed until further notice

All caves, sinkholes, tunnels and mines on DNR properties are closed to provide protection from white-nose syndrome, a fungus that is killing bats in large numbers in the Eastern U.S. and is now spreading west. This includes the old railroad tunnel at Clifty Falls. To learn more about WNS visit www.dnr.IN.gov/batdisease. Thank you for cooperating with DNR in this effort.

This was one of the coolest parts of the day. Litterally! It was about 10-15 degrees cooler standing infront of it. I wanted to go inside just to cool off, but didn't want to find any critters...

We never did find a place to use our swimsuits but I did manage to make a splash in a small stream (about 18 inches) that flowed accross our path to Tunnel falls. We did get wet, but it was from sweat!

We then hit the local town and found a place called The Pines (which is also a name of a resturant back in WI) that reminded us a lot of Romy's Nightingale Supper club back home. We managed to cool off there before heading back home.

On our way home we drove to downtown Madison, "Prettiest small town in the Midwest"
according to their brochure. It is cute. Old world charm. We liked it.

As we headed back along the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, we stopped at General Butler State Park. We did like the cabins there, but we are still in search of a campground WITH a beach. They are so far elusive around here... but next week, we may have found one! We will see!