DAY THREE - STILL TRAVELLING NORTH

On our way to Lexington KY,  we saw a sign for the Kentucky Artisan Center at Berea.  Of coarse, we had to stop for a while.

 They have the work of over 650 artists shown in the huge gallery.  There is a restaurant in one end of the building, and the food smelled wonderful.  Too bad it was too early for lunch!

 Before reaching Lexington, we took a detour to the Red River Gorge area in the Daniel Boone National Forest.


The narrow road snaked along a ridge, with many twists and turns.

We stopped at one of the scenic outlooks to see the view.  It was an amazing site, to see such a deep gorge, filled with rock outcroppings and lush spring trees.

 Our destination was the sky bridge.  After parking the car we headed into the woods along this nice path.  The sign said that it was a mile and a quarter loop.

Here I am venturing across the stone bridge!  You see that I am staying in the center - no guard rails and a long drop on either side.

 The path continued quite a way, and we were starting to go downhill.  Then it made a turn and began dropping quite quickly, with handrails every so often.


There were shallow caves and holes in the rock face, and still we kept going downhill.

We got our first view of the rock bridge!  It looks so substantial from the top, but very narrow from the bottom!

There is a natural fissure along the bottom of the span!

Our final view of the amazing natural wonder.

Now came the hard part - the climb back up!

The trail became steeper every yard, and we were breathing hard by the time we saw this.....

The bottom of a long, twisting staircase!  There were 74 steps to the top of the stairs, then the final part of the trail was the steepest yet!  
Good thing there was a nice bench at the top, where DH and I sat until our heart rate and breathing was back to normal!

We said goodbye to such a lovely place, and headed back along the road, heading to our final destination for the day - Cincinnati OH.
We plan to relax and see the sights tomorrow, then head to the quilt show for the preview evening!