Been working on a photo project on Red River Gorge lately, camping and wandering around taking photos. On my last trip down there I got a little sidetracked and ended up doing a little hiking and shooting at Natural Bridge State Park.
In reality the distinction between Red River Gorge and Natural Bridge is largely imaginary, they border one another and are much the same in terms of landscape, critters, and forces that shaped them. I ended up camping at Natural Bridge because the trailhead for one of the arches I wanted to visit in Red River Gorge was located there.
Since I was already there it was kind of hard to justify not making a short side trip to shoot Natural Bridge. The park got its start back at the turn of the 20th century as a destination for excursion trips on the local railroad. Eventually the railroad died and it ended up as a nature preserve and state 'resort' park.
Biggest difference between there and Red River Gorge is that with it being a nature preserve you can't bring dogs on the trail or go off-trail. Well, and there you mostly hike up to things as opposed to hiking down to them in the gorge.
Arches National Park in Utah is the only place I've come across that comes close to having as many rock arches as this neck of the woods. In Arches NP it was a major no-no to climb or walk on any of the arches but at Natural Bridge that's half the fun.
If you take the original trail up to the bridge then you get the privilege of going through 'Fat Man's Squeeze'. If you and claustrophobia are well acquainted I probably wouldn't recommend it though.
It is kind of nice if tight spaces don't bother you, all that rock just radiates cool, some all-natural air conditioning. There's other trails and a chair lift if that's not your thing.
Once you make it atop the bridge there's nary a bit of shelter from the sun. It was nearly 90F when I was there, which was even more obnoxious after the cool of Fat Man's Squeeze. The views from up there were enough to make you forget about the heat, at least for a little bit.
That's Lookout Point off on the left, the last two photos of this post were taken there. My original plan for my photo project was to camp at Natural Bridge the first night and shoot the sunset from here. Unfortunately, when I arrived the park was on fire and I couldn't even camp here. Wouldn't have worked anyway, the trails close at dusk.
It wasn't a particularly big fire, at least by today's standards, only burned 125 acres. Still, you could see evidence of it, it'd burned up the side of one end of the bridge and along the trail leading to Lookout Point.
For better or worse it spared the chair lift. Made the mistake of riding that thing once in late fall, damn near froze to death before I made it to the top. Friend of mine rode it while tripping on mushrooms, told me later he was about ready to jump just to get off of it.
Natural Bridge looks a lot smaller when everything is green and growing. I'm afraid I'm going to have to brave the crowds and come up here in the fall when the leaves start changing.
This last view from Lookout Point brings us to the end of this #WednesdayWalk. I think that is Battleship Rock straight ahead but don't quote me on that.