Daniel Boone National Forest from the Forest Service, USDA home page. We are near the top, just under the sign that says “I-64”
On July 11, 2016, We headed north from London, Kentucky to our next adventure, just 70 miles north and slightly east. “The Daniel Boone National Park (DBNP) embraces some of the most rugged terrain west of the Appalachian Mountains. Steep forested slopes, sandstone cliffs and narrow ravines characterize the land…Spread across 21 counties of southern and eastern Kentucky, more than 708,000 acres of national forest system lands are managed within a 2.1 million-acre proclamation boundary.” We’ve emphasized rugged as I don’t think we read about the forest from this website!
This summer, our emphasis has been on hiking and we finally met our match! We arrived here early enough in the day so we could get out and hike! Yay, this was our best travel day all summer. What really peaked our interest and brought us here was also to visit Natural Bridge State Park, surrounded by the DBNP.
Well, this is a fun way to cross over into the park….we’re still not in the actual Natural Bridge State Park.
It was a beautiful walk to the actual trail head. We’ve already walked at least 1/2 mile from the parking lot. Now is says it’s only .75 mile. Piece of cake! Oh, did we mention it was about 90 degrees out and the humidity was again, off the charts! But what a beautiful day!
Natural steps don’t bother me! Strange isn’t it? Do we fill a bit silly with our hiking poles? We had no idea what the hike was going to be like. We just naturally brought them and we ended up being glad!
Let’s learn about it from the official website….and this is what we read. It looked like a piece of cake, but we walked over 3/4 mile to get to the actual trailhead PLUS it was 90 degrees with 85% humidity. So that made it a bit more challenging than this “mild description:”
It’s a tight squeeze! “Flowing water has made a spectacular deep and narrow crevice in limestone.” I searched the Internet to try to find out it’s dimension.
Here is another view as I ended the squeeze through.
Those of you who know Bill know he is not particularly fond of heights. But he doesn’t want to miss the “reward.” I’m not sure the poles are needed up on this hard limestone surface it they made him feel “safer.”
It seems we are on top of the world! Bill took this picture then said let’s go down!
We met these two young ladies on the trail, at one of the “rest stops.” We did beat them up to the Bridge. I’m not sure they could have gone further but we said we were, so here they are! Bill couldn’t believe how many young people sat on the edge….
We later found out, many people take the Skylift one way! It costs $13. If we had money, we may have considered it! But we are here for the hiking! We’ll cool down on the way down, we hoped!We didn’t take pictures of the rest of the area at the top of the bridge. There was a gazebo and some sitting areas. But there were plenty of people there, so didn’t want to intrude on them.
All Trails App captured our entire hike. Just 2 1/2 miles, but it was pretty grueling for our first day in this rugged environment!
We hiked our way back down. If you would like to see more pictures, click here. We felt like we actually flew down. It was so much easier and we were energized we did it! We’re now looking forward to lots more hikes, but we may try to read more about them before we start the hike….maybe….Anyway, we were in awe and wonder:
Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD? And who may stand in His holy place? Psalm 24:3
Follow the Tumble Lees! 
Great trail but way too hot for me:) I am in no way an east coast hiker with the humidity. I love the view from the bridge. Glad you were able to hike all the way:) Super challenge!
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We’ve always said it can’t be too hot for us-which was why we moved to Florida in 2004. But we’ve never felt the humidity like this! It’s slowed us down for sure….I was so happy Bill agreed to go up on the bridge!
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