Sheltowee Trace- Day 12- Resurgence Cave

 We put in a good number of miles today and it was all on trail except for a few feet.

While it was pleasant enough, we sort of named it the dim green tunnel. Light was muted, and most of what there was to see was trees. The best thing of the day is Resurgence Cave. This is a limestone cave on War Fork Creek.

Water flows out of the cave all the time. It was even flowing today while things are very dry. Supposedly, there is sometimes enough water to swim in.

There were even some little arches!

We did find some interesting fungi. Pretty sure this is Chicken of the Woods even though it's not orange or peachy.

And these are Jack O'Lantern mushrooms although they are wearing Christmas Ferns.

One kind of funny story. Diane took this picture yesterday of horseback riders coming out of the section of trail we hiked today. It is open for this use.

So, we kept seeing fairly good-sized leafy branches on the trail that had been trimmed from small trees. But I was feeling annoyed that they had just dropped them in the trail. Ha! Then I realized that the horseback riders had probably trimmed them from horseback!

Although it was trail, a fair amount of what we walked had once been roads, so the grades were good. The hardest part was that the final 500-foot climb had a lot of large, loose rocks on the trail so the footing was tough. Tomorrow is a shorter day, and it is also a "changing of the guard" so to speak. Stay tuned.

Miles walked in 2026: 461.8
Miles hiked on the Sheltowee Trace: 135.1

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky, Arvel to Lime Kiln Ridge Rd, 12.8 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Across the Kentucky

Sheltowee Trace- Day 11- Across the Kentucky

 Today was almost all roadwalk again. Soon after starting we crossed the Kentucky River at Heidelburg on the Albert Updyke Bridge. I think Heidelburg used to be a decent town. Now all that's left is a park and a boat ramp except for the bridge.

I was surprised to learn that the headwaters of the Kentucky River aren't very far upstream from this. However, there are a number of low-head dams that help regulate the amount of water flowing more consistently. In fact, one was just upstream from the bridge, but I like the downstream picture better. From here, it flows northwest until joining the Ohio River east of Louisville.

The first 8 miles were on roads- fairly populated roads. We needed a place to sit and eat our snack, and I needed to pee. A small rural church appeared at just the right time! They had a welcome banner, so we made ourselves comfortable on the edge of their ramp. (There were no steps!).

And they had two primitive but clean privies! Everything was perfect. Thanks for the hospitality, Cressmont Baptist Church! We left no trace... just sayin'.

Finally we left the road, but this also meant we started the first of two big climbs for the day. We ate lunch beneath this shelf cave.

Most of the afternoon was kind of tough with two big climbs and a downhill between them. But the weather didn't get too warm, and except for a couple of messy trees to get around the trail was pretty good.

Our new campground was serving nice dinners at a reasonable price, so we did that for our evening meal. Brisket, mac & cheese, vegs. Yum!

We did 13.3 miles today. The biggest challenge of the day was loose dogs. One pack of 5 were overly friendly. 3 of them followed us for about a mile. Then the 4th went a little farther, and one went maybe 2 miles before we convinced it to go home. At another place, one dog came for me, and actually got its lips on my elbow, but the teeth didn't connect.

Miles walked in 2026: 449
Miles hiked on the Sheltowee Trace: 122.3

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky, Quillan Cemetery to Arvel. 13.3 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Sinking Creeks

Sheltowee Trace- Day 10- Sinking Creeks

 Today was almost all road walk, or you could say it was all road walk. But one mile was more like off-road. And it was very interesting. We left a county road to walk down Little Sinking Creek. At one time, this was a road, but has long ago reverted to a soft surface and grass. With rocks! But the area was different from the other rocky places we've been through.

There were caves in the rock walls. Not shelf caves, but limestone, probably with tunnels and caverns. In fact, several of them had water flowing into them. I'm thinking that's probably how the Sinking Creeks got their names.

After a while, the berm that had held the road was all washed away, and the trail walked in the dry streambed. Look at the size of those raw hunks of limestone. Not very weathered. This section must be impassible at certain times of the year.

This is the confluence of Little Sinking Creek and Big Sinking Creek. Big Sinking had water in it. The old road reappeared and turned left along Big Sinking.

The trail crossed Big Sinking Creek at this large curved shelf cave.

Now, some of you know that I've decided I'm an historic transportation junkie. So here's the very cool part. The road did come here in the past. And it crossed the creek just about where we crossed. Here is one of the bridge abutments. I can just picture a car from the 1930's with a young couple coming down here to picnic at the cave. The kicker? This bridge was only abandoned in 1985 after structural failure. I can't quickly find a record of when it was built. But it all seems so old and reverted to nature, and yet, it was functional until I was 37 years old!

On the other side of the creek, the road continued with a fairly steep climb of 400 feet on the old roadbed. This part is now an ATV trail, so it wasn't off-road in any sense of the word.

We passed the 100 mile mark on the Sheltowee today. The rest of the day was roadwalk. The Sinking Creeks was the very best part.

Tomorrow we have to move campgrounds, and have a high-mileage day. It will be a challenge.

Miles walked in 2026: 435.7
Miles hiked of the Sheltowee Trace: 109

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky, Combs Cemetery Road to Quillan Cemetery, 12.1 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Lawful Evil

Sheltowee Trace- Day 9- Lawful Evil

  You've seen those matrices of character motivations, right? I think at today's beginning we were probably Lawful Evil-- at best Chaotic Good.

We got off to a great start crossing the Red River again- this time on a nice pedestrian bridge.

Started up a 450-foot climb past Balanced Rock.

Uh-oh. Most of the climb is supposed to be up a stairway that goes to the top of the rock cliffs. Actually, this sign was at the other end. The one on this end said "Closed to Thru-Hiking." Now what?

First we tried a volunteer pathway that went along the base of the cliff to the left. It continued for almost a half mile until it ended. There was some scrambling involved, but it seemed promising until it didn't. With the electronic maps we knew exactly where we were and thought if we could get to a saddle point where there was a break in the cliff we could get up to the trail we wanted. But the vegetation got thick and unwelcoming so we abandoned that idea and went all the way back to the stairway.

Then we went back down lower (a hiker never wants to give up elevation gained) and tried to bushwhack the other direction to find the red line on the FarOut map. Well, we got ourselves on the line, but there wasn't even a volunteer trail and it was just going to take us back along the same edge of the cliffs.

Bill read some of the comments in the FarOut app and they all said some variation of "just take the closed trail." So we became evil lawbreakers and went over the barrier. Needed to get up there somehow!

Well, nobody said it was going to be easy! We finally made it to the top. Only took us about 2 miles of hiking and an hour-and-a-half to cover this mile of trail!

But once we were at the top we joined the Sand Gap Trail- an easy ridge walk. This took us over the top of Whites Branch Arch. So we didn't see the arch, but this has to be the top of it, called The Narrows.

That became an ATV trail, but it wasn't all torn up so easy walking. Then we joined roads for the rest of the day and came down off the ridge. Road walks give you a chance to use your imagination. This looked like a horse coming out to meet us.

And we found a big stone frog staring at us with his front feet tucked under him.

One thing that surprised us was how high up in the hiils there was evidence of farming with fences and gates. These goats do seem like a better choice than cows might be.

Another fun find was this praying mantis. I don't think I've ever seen one quite this color, but apparently they can turn gray when molting.

Once we got up to the top of the bluff, the hiking for the rest of the day was easy. We especially liked the Sand Gap Trail part.

Miles walked in 2026: 423.6
Miles hiked on Sheltowee Trace: 96.9

Sheltowee Trace, KY. Natural Bridge TH to Combs Cemetery Rd, and some bushwhacking. 13.4 miles (about 1 mile not ST)

See Day Off- SkyBridge

Day Off- SkyBridge

 Today was a day off... well from long hiking. There wasn't much about it that was restful. More on that momentarily. But we started out on what we thought would be a short, easy trek that Diane could participate in. This is the trail to SkyBridge Arch. It was one of my favorite arches and the loop trail past it is only 0.7 mile.

The trail you see above is actually the top of the arch. Diane made it out to there.

From that point you can see the whole span of the central Red River gorge. This is Revenuer's Rock that we could also see from Hansen's Point when Marie and I were here before.

But Bill and I did the whole loop to go down beside SkyBridge Arch. It's truly spectacular. Yes, the other pictures are up on top of that arch.

Most of the rest of the day was spent playing campground roulette. The primitive campsite I had chosen to go to next turned out to be a little too primitive. Getting down the road to it was so bad that the travel time to use the site (with no amenities) just wasn't worth it. Cell service here is so bad that communications are a real problem. But we now have the next two sites reserved, and perhaps a refund for the snafu when we checked in at the place we are now. We ate one meal out.

Not very restful, but I crossed off several things from the to-do list. The serious rain never materialized, but the weather for the next week looks very good. Tomorrow we walk the trail.

Miles walked in 2026: 411.1

SkyBridge Loop Trail, Red River Gorge, KY. 0.7 mile

See Sheltowee Trace- Day 8- Magical