2016-03-28

I spent spring break (2016-03-28 through 2016-03-30) at Carter Caves State Resort Park in Olive Hill, Kentucky. We arrived around 16:00 and checked into our cabin in the park. Found a trail map in the Welcome Center. We noticed that there was a natural bridge within a quarter mile of the cabin so Mindy and I went for walk. Fern Bridge is an easy walk from the cottage circle. I would recommend using the trail at the end of the circle, the trailhead between 243 and 244 was wet.

Our cottage was nice, in good repair and quiet. There is a playground in the middle of the circle to keep the kids occupied, which comes in handy since the cabins do not have WiFi. The 4G is adequate and there is enough signal to browse, probably not enough to work. You can always head to the lodge if you need more bandwidth.

The lodge looked to be well kept too. We didn’t try the restaurant during our stay, I prefer to cook whenever I have the time. The park is in a dry county and I didn’t see wine or beer on the menu so I likely would have been disappointed with dinner anyway.

We spent our full day checking out the natural bridge trails and finished the day the X Cave tour. All of the trails were well groomed, and as safe as you make a trail along a cliff. They are fine for my twelve and over crew. We were back at the cabin around 1700 so I could grill some steaks on the charcoal grill outside of the cabin.

The last day we spent checking out some more the trails around the park. We mostly hiked around the lake. We left the main park and drove out to the Cascade Cave area to hike the lollipop trail there. That provided the kids with a little more challenge. We wrapped up our day around 1600 and started back home. Happy that we were only about 3 1/2 hours from home.