Trail Review - Cedar Falls at Hocking Hills State Park

This hike was well worth it. The parking lot at Cedar Falls has a bathroom and the parking lot wasn’t totally full. It was crowded, but it wasn’t hard to get a spot and we were lucky to get one right by the trailhead, which is a staircase down, and opposite the bathroom.

This trail is set up as a one-way loop and was about a half mile hike. It connected to other trails so you could walk the 2.2 miles to Old Man’s Cave, 2.3 miles to Ash Cave, or 1.2 miles to Whispering Cave, but we didn’t do any of that, just the loop.

This trail had more elevation changes than the Ash Cave one and went down some stairs around to a creek.

We got some really interesting photos that looked like there were rainbows everywhere. We didn’t use a filter, but something about the spray and the lighting created a cool effect and the kids had fun climbing on rocks.

This waterfall was far more impressive than the one at Ash Cave, with a greater volume of water and a big pool.

There was a group standing on a rock together singing, I think to test the acoustics and echo from the cave. I couldn’t tell if it was anything cool, but they were decent singers so it was nice.

This trail wasn’t terribly crowded. While there were people, you could still get photos with no one in them without waiting too long. We actually saw a young couple with a professional photographer set up on one of the staircases, probably for engagement photos, and they seemed to do fine. We hung out and watched for a while because there were rocks behind the photographer (out of their shot) that our kids were happy to climb around on for at least ten or fifteen minutes.

After you pass the falls, you go up some stairs and there’s an even better view from up above.

There's also a bridge to cross.

We nearly got tricked into going the wrong way because the trail actually follows a really narrow rock passage. We were yelling at the kids not to go that way, then realized they were right the whole time. They kept getting ahead, which is a little stressful because I’m afraid they’ll get lost or hurt with all the rock scrambles and drop offs, but everything was fine. You may want to get one of those backpacks with a tail that the kids can wear so you can grab onto them if you want to make sure they stay closer to you.