Vacation Daytrip - Hanging Rock State Park

As I mentioned in yesterday's entry, this past Sunday, Kristy and I went hiking at Hanging Rock State Park. I've been wanting to check out the park for sometime, and it is also in a part of North Carolina that I haven't had a chance to really see.

Route: I-540, I-40, NC 68, NC 65, US 311, NC 89, NC 268, US 52, I-40, I-540.

If you were looking for road photos, you're out of luck on this post. The entire flickr set (over 135 photos) is here.

Hanging Rock State Park has over 18 miles of hiking trails, numerous rock outcroppings and scenic view, and at least five waterfalls.

Our first hike was along the Indian Creek Trail to check out Hidden and Window Falls. The Indian Creek Trail is also part of the statewide Mountains-To-Sea Trail which is currently under development. When completed, the Mountains-to-Seat Trail will run nearly 1,000 miles from Clingman's Dome in the Mountains to Jockey's Ridge State Park along the Outer Banks.

Hidden Falls:

To access the Falls from the Visitor Center, you will need to pass through the picnic area and onto the trail.

Window Falls:

A little further down the trail is Window Falls. Window falls has a slightly better open view area. The fact that you can walk under the falls makes it very popular with kids.

You are able to stand on the rocks above Window Falls and have a great view of the surrounding country side.

Hanging Rock Trail:

What it obviously the most popular hike at the park is the Hanging Rock Trail. From the visitor's center it is about a 1.5 mile hike to the top of the exposed rock.

Hiking to the rock can be strenuous at times, but at the end of the trail...the views are more than rewarding.

Upper Cascade Falls:

Our last hike was the short half mile trail to the Upper Cascade Falls. It's definitely worth it.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to the Lower Cascade Falls or hit a couple of other trails. However, we will certainly be back to enjoy what is fast becoming one of our favorite state parks.

Comments

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Gribblenation

Search This Blog