Clockwise — south into the gorges first, loop back through the state forest roads
Down Into the Gorges
This isn't a driving road. It's a string of gorges you park at the top of and disappear into.
Tucked into the hills of southeast Ohio, Hocking Hills is a cluster of sandstone gorges, recess caves, and waterfalls that feel imported from somewhere far wilder than the Midwest. The roads between them are quiet rural two-lanes; the day is really about the short hikes down into cool, hemlock-shaded canyons, where the Blackhand sandstone has been carved into caves you can walk back under and falls you can stand behind. It's Ohio's most-visited state park — free, no reservation needed — so the only real catch is that the lots fill up: come for the green in spring, the color in fall, or the frozen waterfalls in deep winter, and on summer weekends, get there early.
Start with a hearty breakfast in Logan at Pearl's Diner before heading into the hills (closed Mondays, so plan around it).
First, Conkle's Hollow, one of the deepest gorges in Ohio — a flat, easy trail along the canyon floor between two-hundred-foot sandstone walls dripping with ferns, with a more exposed, unrailed rim trail up top for those with a head for heights. Then the centerpiece, Old Man's Cave: a gorge you descend into on stone stairs and through tunnels cut in the rock, past the Devil's Bathtub and a chain of pools and falls, under a great sheltering recess where a hermit named Richard Rowe really did live in the early 1800s. It's the most beloved hike in the park, for good reason.
Walk or drive on to Cedar Falls, the highest-volume waterfall in the hills — wider and louder than its neighbors — and then Ash Cave, the showstopper: the largest recess cave in Ohio, a horseshoe of sandstone seven hundred feet across and ninety feet high, with a thin ribbon of waterfall spilling off the rim into the gorge below. (The three are strung together on foot by the six-mile Grandma Gatewood Trail, named for the Ohio grandmother who, at sixty-seven, became the first woman to solo-hike the entire Appalachian Trail.) For a quieter, bigger-woods stretch, swing west through Tar Hollow State Park, a remote forest of ridgetop pines, a fire-tower view, and a fraction of the crowds.
Eat well on the way out — lunch at The Ridge Inn in Laurelville (homemade meatloaf and donuts), then a plate of Southern smoked barbecue at Millstone in Logan — and bed down the way everyone in Hocking Hills does: in a cabin in the woods at Valley View, with a hot tub on the deck and nothing but trees out the window.
And hold the plan loosely — Hocking Hills is best wandered, not marched. The plan's a backbone, not a cage: the unmarked side trail, the overlook with nobody on it on a weekday morning, the cave that's somehow even better in the rain. The famous gorges earn their crowds, so beat them there at dawn and you'll have the canyon to yourself; then let curiosity pick the rest. The best stop here is the one you find at the bottom of a trail you took on a whim. Go find it.
