First, I want to apologize that I have been hammering you with all of these travel posts this week. The fact is, I got to visit some really cool places and I am pretty excited to share them with you.
On Tuesday morning my wife and I woke up and decided that we wanted to do a bit more exploring. The majority of our group was still a bit tired out from our adventures at Conkle's Hollow and Old Man's Cave the day before, so I figured it would just be the two of us.
I looked online and found the Rock House trail that looked pretty interesting so I figured we would give it a go.
With warning signs like this, I figured it was for the best that we were tackling this hike solo. Imagine my shock as we were just about to leave and my wife informed me that our two youngest nephews would be coming with us.
By this point it was too late to change our plans, so I smiled and nodded and prayed that I would be able to keep the littles intact until we delivered them back to their parents...
Rock house is pretty cool as it is the only "true" cave in the Hocking Hills park. While many of the other features are called caves (i.e. Old Man's Cave) they are technically considered outcroppings or overhangs.
As you can see from the opening picture, Rock House is more than just an overhang. Giving credit where it is due... That opening picture was taken by my brother in law. After we had left, our nephews sister got up and was overly distraught that her brothers had gotten to go on a hike without her. My brother and sister in law packed her up and brought her to Rock House and took some pictures of their own. They must have gotten there just after we left because we never ran into them.
I got zero pictures from inside the cave because I never entered it. There was a funny sound coming from it and to be honest I didn't know if it was bats or pigeons. I wasn't a fan of getting rabies so I decided against entering. Seeing the photos now, I kind of wish I had been a bit more brave. Next time I guess...
The walk down to Rock House is pretty easy and gives you more views of the layered sandstone cliffs like you see here. As we were heading down the path one of our nephews commented that the hike was really easy. I had to remind them that since we were going down, we would eventually have to go back up, and that might not be quite as easy...
This whole area is really quite stunning and I am hesitant to admit it is on par with many of the sights we have in Michigan (especially the Upper Peninsula). I can't express enough how satisfied you will probably be if you make the trip here. It is pretty breathtaking.
Eventually, the path starts to evolve from dirt and roots to rocks and carved stairways like this one.
This was probably one of the most treacherous areas of the hike. I kept encouraging my nephews to hug the cliff face and stay as far away from the right edge as possible. To their credit, they listened well and did a great job. We had a wonderful morning with them.
If you look really closely, you can see part of the path continuing in the lower center of the photo.
This is looking back up that same path but from the bottom. You can see just past 
This photo was taken just past the actual cave and at the bottom of the gorge. As I mentioned in my past posts, it has been a relatively dry summer, so I have a feeling this area would have been even more spectacular if the water levels were just a bit higher.
These are just some more views from the hike.
As I said, what goes down must come up and this stretch of of switchback trails really gave us a cardio workout coming back up. Even the littles needed to stop and rest a couple of times to catch their breaths.
I know you won't be able to read it, but here is some literature about the area. They have these signs posted at the beginning and end of the trails so you can read about Rock House, the history of the area, and the wild life that thrives here.
Rock House was an awesome adventure and I am really glad that we were able to share it with out nephews despite that not being the original plan. It actually didn't take us too long to do the hike, so we made another stop before heading back to the rental house. You will have to check back next week to hear about that!