McCormick's Creek State Park

We had a wonderful night camped here at McCormick's Creek State Park last night. This morning we packed up camp and set out to explore the park a bit. Our first stop was the trailhead for Trail 5. The hike started in nice green woods

and headed into a karst area complete with sinkhole depressions. We made our way along the loop and soon found ourselves at the entrance for Wolf Cave.

We were unprepared for a trip into the cave (actually I assumed it would be closed due to White Nose Syndrome) and so we admired it from the entrance. We then continued along the trail headed for the Twin Bridges.

The Twin Bridges were impressive.

They were a pair of limestone natural bridges that I assume were once part of a cave system that has since collapsed.

We spent some time investigating the area before getting back on the main trail. The trail crossed a creek several times and we were even treated to the sight of a salamander right on the trail!

Soon after seeing the salamander we were back at the trailhead and ready for our next exploration.

We next headed over to the lodge for a hike to the waterfall on McCormick's Creek. It was a short walk to the small waterfall.

The map showed a trail leading in a short loop from the waterfall, but the trail turned out to be a bit more rugged than we had anticipated. It led through some thick poison ivy into the creek bed.

Instead of getting wet feet and risking getting a poison ivy rash, we decided to head back to the parking lot for the next leg of our drive. This turned out to be good fortune as shortly after we hit the road it started to rain very hard.