Red River Gorge, Easter!

On Easter Sunday we awoke to another beautiful day. Phillip cooked up more of the same bacon and eggs and we took our time packing up the campsite. After we were done, we headed over to a popular rock formation called Chimney Top, which I suspect is the highest point in Red River Gorge. It overlooked another arch, which I thought was the Princess Arch, but now I can't be sure.

Here we are on Chimney Top, then overlooking the arch nearby:





Someone had apparently illegally camped along the trail (you're not supposed to camp within 300 feet of any trail) and decided to make a tee-pee. So we took this as a photo opportunity.



I took this along the side and top of a natural bridge. The boys are under the bridge. Much like trolls.



Seeing all these rock ledges and cave-like places made me really think about the indians long ago. Just how many of them died from camping under a ledge, lighting a campfire, heating then subsequently cooling the rock over head and eventually having the million tons of rock fall right on top of them???



This was where climbing and carrying Lawrence on my back got pretty dicey. Getting down that rock to get to the 'view' part was very scary! I kept on thinking that this is a really stupid way to kill my child. Why in the heck am I doing this??? Incidentally, I did not go down the 'adventure' part of the rock like Phillip is. I went down a less-steep side trail, but even it was hard to do with Lawrence in the pack.


Here's the 'view' part of the trail! It was insanely high up.

This was as far as I could get. My hands are sweating now as I type this. Just to the right of me was a straight down drop-off! I found that I could get to just that seated position and no further. Even though the rock was flat and looks pretty safe, the drop-off all around it was super scary!



I took this picture (just barely) from where I was sitting above.



Getting back down was no picnic, but we made it! I couldn't even look as Phillip held Lawrence via the pack over an edge to get him down. Thank you Evenflo for making such a sturdy pack!!! We went to the underneath part of a natural bridge. I found a little cave.



Under the natural bridge. Pretty cool, huh?



This was up in a rock formation, just at Phillip's reach.



My guys under the natural bridge.

Lawrence checking out the cave.



We had a final farewell picnic of left over burgers and headed back through the Nada Tunnel toward home. I took this picture from the sunroof as we were going. It's a one-lane tunnel and we had someone behind us. Otherwise I would've stopped. It was man-made when the area was used for logging years ago.



In the Nada Tunnel. It was very, very dark in there! I took this picture from the sunroof also. It wasn't until I had just clicked the shutter, that I remembered that there is a waterfall just as we were going to exit the tunnel. Oops!! Better get that sunroof closed!!!!

Poor Phillip got stuck with the two-hour drive home. We all sacked out pretty much the whole trip!

Fortunately I had the foresight to mostly prepare the Easter dinner before we left. So all I had to do was pop the ribs in the oven and cook a noodle dish! After dinner, we coloured Easter eggs. Better late than never!! Lawrence coloured the ugliest egg and Archie did the prettiest one. Phillip made a trail-egg. Lawrence threw his first egg on the floor before it got coloured, so he had to try again with a different egg. We told him he wasn't supposed to do that, but I don't think he was listening! Archie took a video of us after we were done colouring. It's a bit shakey (because seven year olds are never still!) so be forewarned!