Carter Caves State Park Kentucky

Wednesday
With the promise of a couple of dry sunny days with reduced heat and humidity, we made an impromptu decision yesterday evening to go away for two days down to Carter Caves State Park in eastern Kentucky, spending one night in the lodge. It was a two and a half hour drive, and we arrived late morning. We had been once before, camping, but that was many years ago now. There are four caves open to the public, so we decided to do one today and one tomorrow. Today’s cave was X cave, the name referring to the configuration of its passages which cross in the center of the cave to form the letter "X". Interestingly, one side of the cave is “wet”, that is still active, whilst the other is dry, as it is capped with sandstone rather than limestone. After the tour, which wasn’t very long, we had a hot dog from a food truck in the car park, rather than returning to the lodge, before setting out on the Three bridges trail, which as it’s name suggests passes by three natural stone bridges, as well as striking sandstone cliffs. Scenes from the trail are shown in my collage. The top two images are of the largest of the bridges, Smoky Bridge. As you approach Fern Bridge, middle right, it appears to be just a recess cave, but then as you get closer, and look up (middle left) you see that it is a bridge, just very close to the cliff face.