Hawk Falls Trail in Hickory Run State Park
[ Signal-to-noise ratio for set: 29.3% ]
Kim and I visited Hickory Run State Park this weekend. We checked out Sand Spring Lake and hiked around it, then went to Wawa for cheesesteaks, then came back to the park and hiked on Hawk Falls Trail.
Hawk Run is a little river that's a lot like St. Peter's Village (which is in/near French Creek State Park), with big rocks in the river so you can hop down the creek itself instead of walking on the trail beside it. The rocks are mostly smaller and fewer than at St. Pete's, at least for the stretch of Hawk Run that we saw, but it was still a lot of fun.
We ended our hike at Hawk Falls, which is a waterfall that's about 20-30 feet tall. It's really neat, extremely loud, and the water at the bottom is plenty deep enough to swim, if only it hadn't been a cool day (and if the water hadn't been frigid, since it's mid-October). The waterfall looks really small in the photos for some reason; it seemed much bigger in person, maybe because of the noise.
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 We're standing opposite the waterfall on a huge rock slab that slopes into the water. |
 Heidi was scared because of the noise from the waterfall, and the noise from the route 476 bridge in the distance -- it was behind us and fairly far away, but when a semi truck went over it, it sounded like thunder, and Heidi is deathly afraid of thunder. |
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 (video) This movie of Kim and Heidi sitting on the rocks isn't terribly exciting, but you can hear the waterfall. |
 Getting down to this spot opposite the waterfall required some climbing that Heidi was too small to do, so I had to carry her, and that also scared her. |
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 Looking downstream below the falls. In the lower-right you can see a second waterfall that was only about 3 feet high. It still had very deep water below it though. |
 Looking farther downstream. |
 Some fall foliage on the trail on the way back from the falls. |
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