Today we headed down from our campsite and hiked to the Natural Tunnel. We found the trail that led us to the tunnel.
Rock that fell from the arch of the tunnel
Looking down from “Lovers Leap”
On the way down we passed Lovers Leap. The rocks, funny enough, looked like elephant skin. A story tells of an Indian who jumped off the rock after losing his true love. We saw why the Indian jumped from it because it was very high. We continued down the trail. until we reached the bottom. We walked on the boardwalk that led to the mouth of the tunnel.
Train tracks coming out of tunnel.
NOBODY was there. My brother and I caught autumn leaves as they fell. After being there about 5 minutes, a HUGE rock fell and came crashing down! Just kidding! It wasn’t a huge rock, but it was a respectable sized rock that fell. I went over and picked it up. Souvenir! We hiked past the tunnel to follow the creek. We saw this big bridge that we crossed.
Bridge
Past the bridge was a little cabin that dated back to the 1700’s. We went inside to look around.
Cabin!
After exploring the cabin we hiked up to the visitor center to locate a park ranger.
Hiking back toward the tunnel
We wanted to go into the tunnel so we walked up to the ranger’s office and asked if we could. The ranger we talked to said that we couldn’t go into the tunnel that day because she was unable to go with us due to other activities. But, she said to be sure to contact her ahead of time on our next visit so we could all go explore the tunnel together. We headed back to the campsite and started packing up our stuff. It was okay that we were not able to go inside the tunnel today because on another weekend we could come back – its not that far away from home, about 2 hours. So we packed up and made our way to the next place we were going to stay. It was called The New River. We were to stay at Eggleston Springs Campground, right on the river. It took us a little while to find our campsite in the dark and rain, but we found a picnic shelter and backed the teardrop under it. My brother and I set up our tent and put our stuff in. We were SO hungry – thankfully the rain stopped so we could build a fire and cook burgers. After eating a nice juicy burger, I passed out in my sleeping bag hoping for another good day.