Lynchburg Series: Natural Bridge State Park
My husband got me a book, PhotoSecrets Blue Ridge Parkway Virginia for Christmas. When traveling down to Lynchburg this summer with no plans on where to go, this book was the perfect guide to some attractions nearby. Natural Bridge State Park was number 1 on my list of places to make sure we visit, so we thought that would be a fun day trip for the 4th of July!
Before venturing off from the Airbnb, we packed up a cooler of sandwiches and a couple of beers along with our hiking gear and water bottles for the day. The drive was about 50 minutes on some very windy roads but didn’t have much traffic. We took a very scenic route along the James River and blue ridge mountains for miles, which made the twisty-turny drive much more enjoyable.
Upon arriving at Natural Bridge State Park, we parked at the visitor center and bought our tickets to enter the park. There’s a pretty steep set of stairs to walk down to the entrance of the park, which had a nice small waterfall at the bottom.
We stopped to take a look, then made sure we had our tickets to the park in hand. We showed them at the entrance and walked right in… the natural bridge is… right there as soon as you walk in! It was pretty astonishing to see. The size is unbelievable, even bigger than you can imagine from pictures.
Before venturing out to Natural Bridge State Park, we were doing a little research and learned that Route 11 actually drives over the Natural Bridge (though you can’t see it from the road). It seems like VDOT will eventually be re-routing traffic off of the bridge, and there are a lot of other plans to add to the park in the future. Inside the park past the bridge, you can find the Monacan Village, Saltpeter Cave, and a two-mile hike on the Cedar Creek Trail to Lace Falls.
Along the hike, we saw lots of pretty views of the creek, and even ran into a snake! The real treasure was Lace Falls at the end of the trail.
Lace Falls was a really pretty waterfall that was well worth the mild hike. A nice spot to take a little rest before hiking back to the bridge.
We hiked back to the bridge, sat on the benches by the entrance for another water break, and enjoyed some last views of the bridge before heading back to the car for a nice air-conditioned lunch break! Then, we visited a very fun, yet peculiar place next… stay tuned for the next blog post to see where we went! Any guesses? Drop them in the comments!
