Hocking Hills Family Vacation

Our first family trip in a while was to Hocking Hills, Ohio. We were first told about this place a few years ago but then in the last six months or so it has com up a LOT and my parents decided that we needed to go see what all the fuss was about. Boy, was it all were were told and more!

While we were a little bummed that it was in the mid to upper 70s the week we were there (seriously, it was the last week of October!!), it ended up being pretty pleasant because we were down in gorges a lot, and it was also cloudy several days and there were breezes.

We did the Upper Falls/Old Man's Cave/Lower Falls trail on our first full day there but we didn't actually see Old Man's Cave because we thought we'd come back to it and we didn't. Even though there were no waterfalls, everything was still absolutely gorgeous!!! Being below the trees was also so cool!

In the three full days we were there we did four trails and Dad and the boys did one by themselves. We were under the impression that it would be much more rocky than it was so if we go back I'm definitely wearing my skirts. Not long skirts, but skirts. I barely had enough pants to do three days :)

I'm going to mess up the order so this is not chronological but we saw Old Man's Cave, The Rock House, Conkel's Hollow, Ash Cave, and Whispering Cave. We ate at some local restaurants - The Millstone BBQ and Captain Ron's Pirate Pizza - enjoyed the hot tub that was at our cabin, and watched some movies/played some games in the evenings.

The ONE THING that was not cool about the trip were the swarms of ladybugs. Yes, I said SWARMS! There were two places in particular where we literally had to walk through a cloud of ladybugs. One of my brothers commented that he didn't know I didn't like ladybugs and I said, "I don't like swarms of anything!". It was not pleasant.

We hope to go back sometime when there are waterfalls because it will look even cooler but even without them, it was well worth the trip. My brothers had a great time climbing things, I enjoyed taking photos, and we all were happily surprised at how well we did with the stairs and terrain.

Have you ever been to Hocking Hills? What was your favorite place? If you haven't been, would you like to go now?

(Most of my photos were phone images because I didn't feel comfortable having my camera out a lot of the time.)