Waterfalls & More at Clifty Falls State Park

             Hey folks! For our 5^th Indiana state park adventure, we decided to visit Clifty Falls. Myka seems to enjoy waterfalls almost as much as I do (and who DOESN'T like waterfalls?), so this was the logical choice for our next adventure after her enthusiasm visiting Cataract Falls a couple weeks before. (Yes, believe it or not, Indiana has quite a few waterfalls!)

             Clifty Falls is a pretty popular park in our state for obvious reasons, but we went at a great time. It was the last week of April on a Tuesday afternoon and there was hardly anyone there! I like visiting places when they're not busy because I'm an introvert. Plus Myka gets overwhelmed by crowds a lot of times. Anyways...

             It's a bit of a drive for us (about 2 hours and 15 minutes), so our first pit stop was the bathroom as soon as we got to the inn. Instead of doing a picnic lunch like we usually do, I thought it would be fun and novel for the kids to eat at the restaurant there. They had a nice random selection of items for a reasonable price. We had two meals and two drinks and the total came to a little over $15, so I didn't think that was too bad.

             Myka and I attempted to check out the gift shop on our way out, but Ripley was a little too enthusiastic about running around after being stuck in the car for so long and the high chair while eating, so we wandered around back to check out the view, as I promised Myka. I wish I could have gotten a better picture, but you can kind of make out the town of Madison and the Ohio River. You could definitely tell it was up even from that far away!

 These crazy people have not 1, but 2 Copperhead snakes!

 There is an area for turtles off to the right and the kids area off to the left.

 Looking in from the main entrance. Most of the "grown up" displays were down this hall as well as the bird watching room to the right and some toads and a garter snake at the end, if I remember correctly. I'm kind of weird about wanting to know what to expect at a nature center before I go (Is it geared more towards adults, children, or both?), so I hope this helps for those of you who are the same!

             Since the hotel is at the very south end of the park and the main waterfalls are at the very north part, we backtracked after leaving the inn and visited the nature center next door. I was really impressed with this one. It had plenty of exhibits for adults and kids alike. There's a little walk-through of it included in the video at the end. 

             Out of 10 trails at Clifty Falls, only 2 are listed as moderate and easy. This was a bit intimidating, so naturally, I decided to stick to the short, .75 mile easy trail to do with the kids. This was quite possibly the most boring trail I've ever been on. I know, I know, you're just supposed to relax and whatnot out in nature, but...There just wasn't anything spectacular about it. I guess I'm getting spoiled? We made up for it later, though, and then some!

             John got me all excited about going camping this year (we haven't been in probably 7 years!), so I decided to check out the campground in case I felt like the park was worthwhile to make another trip with all four of us and stay at. We just checked out the tent camping loop since we're “crazy tent campers”. It seemed pretty nice. At least half of the spots had shade of some sort and none were too far away from the shower house, so that's a plus!

             I love lookout areas, so we had to stop at one we passed on the way in. We got our first glimpse of the actual, big Clifty Falls there. It was also where two insane looking trails, 6 and 7, I believe, meet up.

             We finally reached the main attraction as it was getting late in the afternoon. Big Clifty was easy enough to get to. Little Clifty was another story. Stairs, stairs, and more stairs! One was so steep that I initially didn't want to go down it, having the kids and all. But, Myka and myself wanting to get some better shots talked myself into and it was worth it!

Staircase? More like SCAREcase! At the top, this one looks like it just vanishes halfway down!

             After we got back up to the top, I let the kids play at the playground for a little bit to burn some last remaining energy off before being stuck in the car again for several hours. We had a good time (Myka didn't even drive me that crazy! ;) ) and we got to do everything I had wanted to, but I would definitely like to go back and be able to do some more things/spend some more time at things we did do. There were at least 2 other waterfalls we didn't get to see!

             I thought it was a funny coincidence that we received an Outdoor Indiana magazine (It came with the state park pass package we received for Christmas. Pretty sweet!) that had a big article on waterfalls in Indiana around the time we went to Cataract Falls. In case you can't tell, I'm on a waterfalls kick now too as well as state parks! Anyhow, I saw there was one that would just be a little bit out of the way on our way home, so we visited Anderson Falls out in the middle of nowhere Jennings county too.

             Definitely be sure to check out both of these destinations, if you can, and come back next week for details on mine and hubby's anniversary weekend getaway to Spring Mill State Park!