Just a few hours West of the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park lays this beautiful park – Big South Fork. It is in both Tennessee and Kentucky and offers many adventures to outdoor enthusiasts: Horseback trails, hiking, mountain biking, climbing, a scenic train ride and kayaking. The Shawnee and Cherokee tribes once roamed this land but they ceded the land to the government in 1805. By the 1900s this land was bustling with mining operations. By the 1960’s the area was stripped of many natural resources and left abandoned. In the 1970’s congress saw the potential in this land and declared it a National River AND Recreation Area – the first of its kind. I can see why. The area has taken thousands of years to become what it is today – with the river carving the sandstone and shale into shapes, creating hills, river valleys, and rocky ridges. The gorge is home to a variety of fish and mussels, and the valley is home to many wild flowers, plants and animals – like Black Bears and Blue Heron. I couldn’t believe this place didn’t have the prestigious title of National Park, because its beauty is unreal. We hope to return to Tennessee one day to see Great Smoky Mountain, and this one is added to our list to return to.
Where We Stayed
We camped at Blue Heron NPS campground in Kentucky. The campground was ok, but not as spacious as the Cumberland Gap one we had just left. This is clearly an older NPS campground that hasn’t seen the upgrades that a lot of the more “prestigious” parks have seen. All of the people at the camp were friendly, and were eager to give us recommendations on trails and things to do. We were even greeted by a “neighbor” walking around in his underwear waving and smiling at us.
What We Did
After we arrived at camp, we quickly set up and left to go find an adventure. We ended up going to the Devil’s Jump Overlook first, recommended by a fellow camper (Thanks “guy in his underwear”!). The overlook was a 900 feet walk from the parking lot and gave us a glimpse into the Devil’s Jump rapids. The gorge itself was quite lovely. We hopped back in the car and headed to Blue Heron Mining Community Outdoor Museum. This was an NPS interpretive center, so we originally went there to get the stamp for our National Park book. The NPS employees weren’t very helpful at all (my first experience of this kind) and looked eager to get rid of me. We ended up walking around the outdoor museum learning about the old mining community. They even had an old railroad bridge we walked across as well as mining exhibits. Sparky didn’t care of any of the mining equipment (probably reminded him of the metal people statues at Kitty Hawk).
We drove about 30 minutes North to Yahoo Falls. We had read that this was the largest falls in Kentucky – but trying not to get our hopes up on the “cool” factor. The falls loop was about 1.2 miles and involved some steel-grate stairs. We learned that Sparky didn’t like the grated stairs at all and had to be coaxed into going down them. When we arrived at the falls we were pleasantly delighted. Although the falls were not as big as some we have seen, it was over this really cool cave like structure. The rock formation provided shelter to tribes for hundreds of years. Today, I stood in there and tested out the acoustics while Steve photographed the falls. After the rest of the loop and a brief stop at the overlook near the parking lot for a sunset shot, we headed back “home” and enjoyed a night by the fire.
The next morning we drove 90 minutes through some pretty sketch roads to reach our next trail. Google and Waze didn’t quite agree that the route we were taking actually led anywhere. After some tens of miles on gravel roads, we picnicked and did the Twin Arches trail (turned out Google was right, but as it has in the past, chose some really “interesting” roads and we were glad to be in a truck with high clearance and 4WD). The trail was 1.2 miles, but in the humidity and heat it might as well been 20 miles. It was exhausting and sweaty. The arches are natural arches of sandstone developed over a long time by water. There are caves inside and beautiful designs left on the rocks from the water. Sparky was less than impressed while Steve took time to take photos. The trail gets you right underneath the arches and caves, which was cool, but it was challenging to capture their true scale on camera from such a close vantage point.
We headed over to the Main Visitor Center, the Bandy Creek Visitor Center. It shouldn’t be a surprise that when we showed up there were parking flaggers and big signs for “Event Parking”. How do we always show up to these events by accident? This was for their annual Story Telling Weekend. A weekend of famous storytellers from across the country comes here to… well… tell stories. There are tons of merchandise booths, bands, food tents girl scouts, boy scouts from all over the region to participate in the activities. We walked in, checked it out, I used the free Wifi to update my kindle library books, and left. Well, I did check out some local craft booths, but really – it was too hot, too crowded, and with Sparky (who was not interested) time to leave.
We decided to do a close by overlook on our way back North – the East Rim Overlook, which was not as impressive as we hoped it would be. After a short stay, we drove North towards our camp. We stopped at Bear Creek Overlook, which was about 0.25mile walk in a field towards a cliff to check out the gorge. It was a beautiful view. I wish we were visiting in spring, I can imagine the wild flowers looking AMAZING. We did the nearby Split Bow Arch Loop Trail, 1.2 miles. The arch, though less remarkable than the ones we saw earlier, had NO ONE on the trail, so it felt like we were completely alone in the woods – both eerie and nice. The trail had a stairway up through the arch, which was cool too, giving us great angles of the arch.
Exhausted, and slightly dehydrated, we headed back home. I can safely say – even though we didn’t hike an extraordinary amount – this tropical like heat put us easily to sleep that night, including Sparky. Our truck was put through its paces on the rough roads and proved more than capable as well.
What’s Next
More of Tennessee!
