Fishtrap Natural Bridge Daniel Boone National Forest Laurel County Kentucky I am constantly amazed as I explore my wondrous home of Kentucky. This past weekend myself and several good friends headed out to Fishtrap Natural Bridge in northern Laurel County outside London. Armed in a Jeep Grand Cherokee with a 3 inch lift we made our way across a severely rutted, incredibly bumpy National Forest road loaded with deep puddles and fallen trees. Imagine yourself sitting in a bottle of A-1 Steak Sauce and being shook up violently before being poured onto T-Bone Steak, because that's what it felt like happened. After parking the jeep at the beginning of an old 4-wheeler path we got out and did our best to untense ourselves from our ride. According to the GPS we were about a quarter mile from the bridge so we began our decent. Having never been here before the 4 wheeler trail went off to the left away from our destination so I opted to continue in the direction of the coordinates off trail making our way down to a small runoff where we turned and followed it further downhill. A short time later we saw the bridge and what a sight it was! With two waterfalls, it is a natural bridge with a span of 77 ft that is 22 ft high and a deck that is only 4 ft thick. One can't just stand there and not feel small in the presence of the incredible natural feature. Although there an numerous perspectives to shoot the bridge, today my favorite was underneath the arch shooting towards the sun, to me it offered the best options to accentuate it's massive size. And to be honest, I can't wait to come back here after a rain event, if you look closely to the left and right of the trees in the enormous hole you can see the two waterfalls. Can you image what this would look like after 2 inches of rain? Yeah, this place is pretty special and is definitely one of the best kept secrets of the Daniel Boone National Forest! Oh, and that atv path that went off to the left, it did lead down to the arch. We found that out on the way back up.
Funston Arch Complex Eagle Creek Natural Bridge Privately Owned McCreary County Kentucky In April when myself and some good friends visited Cumberland Falls State Park! On our first morning we headed over to the Funston Arch Complex and I was looking for some new perspectives. I really dug this one framing in the window, the falls and beyond the falls the Eagle Creek Natural Bridge. It's one of Kentucky's most unique and beautiful places and every chance I get I'm going to pay this place a visit!
Garrison Natural Bridge Daniel Boone National Forest Pulaski County Kentucky Fall came late in 2018 and as I expected this adventure was a bit weak in fall color but it wasn't weak in the summer color department! For some time now I've been wanting to visit the little known Garrison Natural Bridge in Kentucky's Daniel Boone National Forest. Though not far from a seldom used but passable forest road, the offtrail hike required pushing through plenty of briers. This impressive natural bridge is a beauty and lived up to my expectations as one of the cooler arches I've visited, but from a photography standpoint it was one of the toughest I've tried to shoot. The trees are all in the wrong place for a great comp. Probably the more interesting features of the bridge is its two waterfalls. Extremely wet weather waterfalls mind you. One waterfall falls to the base of the arch and the other drops over the cliff ledge on the other side, very cool. It will be highly unlikely I will ever have the opportunity to visit here in the conditions to show off these features. A spot I did want to try for a composition was a few feet above the top of the upper falls, but we had some concerns about how slick the grade would be to set up one since it was very wet and mossy and one slip would have you sliding down to the ledge of the falls and tumbling 10 or 15 feet. I'll certainly be back in different conditions and a different season!
