Since we were only scheduled to be in Hocking Hills for three full days, that meant we needed to pack a lot of activity into at least one of the days. That day just happened to be Monday and if you missed yesterday's post we started the day at Conkle's Hollow.
From there, we all piled into our three vehicles and headed down the road a bit to one of the largest hiking areas that Hocking Hills has to offer. It is called Old Man's Cave and there are actually three or four different major sights to see in this area.
Unfortunately, due to the size of our group, we were unable to fully explore the area, but my wife and I plan on coming back some day and making the full circuit.
Above is a little background on the area and the cave.
One of the first stops on the trail is a small bridge that crosses the river that falls into this basin. It is simply called Upper Falls and as I mentioned yesterday since the year has been so dry and the water levels are so low, it was pretty unimpressive.
This is a view from where you see the people standing at the waters edge in the photo above. You can just see the bridge I took the previous photo from at the top of the image. I have seen photos of these falls when there is less of a drought and it is pretty cool. Unfortunately, we just hit one of those off seasons I guess.
A short distance past the start of the trail is a feature that is called Devil's Bathtub. You can see it in the photo above, but again since the water table was so low it wasn't that spectacular. Especially compared to some of the photos they have in the link I just shared.
The basin is really only a few feet deep, but of course to make it seem more mysterious they claim it extends to Hades. Signs on the site did say that although you may not drown by falling in, you likely wouldn't be able to climb back out because the walls of the basin are so slippery.
Additionally, I think the water that falls into the basin runs below ground and exits much further downstream, so swimming out would not be an option either.
A bit past Devil's Bathtub is an area that I believe is know as whispering bridge. I honestly don't know if whispering bridge is the one you see at the top, or the platform bridge that we walked across in the middle of the shot here. It was pretty cool, but we were a bit concerned about my wife's parents making it across okay. Her mom was relying heavily on handrails to keep her steady along the walk and this bridge is completely void of them.
It had kind of become a running joke in our family about all of the people wandering around with those telescoping hiking pole things, but after making this trek I can kind of appreciate why some might find them useful.
In addition to our large group, there were a ton of people at Old Man's Cave. It was really hard to get clean shots without lots of people in them. I expect Winter might give you less visitor density, but even a touch of ice on some of these trails could prove deadly.
This was probably one of my favorite parts of the whole hike. The tunnel actually extends a couple hundred feet or so and it is quite dark. It was funny because some of our group got ahead of the rest and gave them a good scare as they entered the tunnel.
I got to pass through the tunnel three times because I had to run a bottle of water back to my father in law who had to stop and take a rest before continuing.
There are many side trails that shoot off the main hiking trail we took. By this time of day, the kids were starting to get hungry since it was already our second major hike. My wife's parents were also struggling a bit so we gingerly finished this hike and then called it a day.
Old Man's Cave is a really cool area and I look forward to coming back in the future and doing some more exploring. Our relatives that live down in Ohio were already planning to make a Fall trip to the park to take advantage of the changing leaves.
As I said earlier, I think the park is open year round, but I would be hesitant to walk some of these trails in the Winter. Many of them are damp from the stream and other sources and even an inch of ice could lead to a major injury.
If you look at a map of the hiking trails in Hocking Hills it can be a bit deceiving. Several of them are listed as being less than one or two miles long, but I don't believe that takes into account the elevation changes that you have to make during the hike. While it may only be .5 miles round trip from the beginning of the main Old Man's Cave trail to the end, the climbing up and down probably adds another .5 miles to the whole hike.
Check back tomorrow when I share a hike that my wife and I decided to take the next day on our own!
