Clifty Falls and Madison, Ind. Vacation Review, Part 1
Posted by nathan on 09 May 2007 | Tagged as: my life.
Last weekend Emily and I had a wonderful vacation at Clifty Falls State Park in Madison, Ind.
The state park 
is full of loads of waterfalls (as the name suggests). Some of the waterfalls are rather small, like the one pictured here, but there are four major falls at the park with over 60′ vertical drop. The main Clifty Falls has a 72′ drop.
The park and city of Madison were both very empty while we were there, and we liked it. We celebrated our second wedding anniversary on Monday of our vacation–we were planning on going out to eat, but when we got there, we figured out that pretty much the entire city of Madison shuts down on Monday. about half the city is shut down on Tuesday, and the city rocks Wednesday – Sunday. Such is a tourist city, i suppose.
So Monday night we had our anniversary dinner at the only restaurant we could find open anywhere–an Italian place at a golf course. When we arrived, there was one other table there. They soon left. We sat on a screened-in porch, and it was a beautiful evening. After we got our meal–which was a very good meal–we waited for our server to check on us. And waited. Then, the chef closed some windows so we couldn’t see inside. And then we waited some more. About 30 minutes later, the chef and our server emerged from a side room together, and the server checked on us. We got to giggling about what those two were doing together–they were either smoking a joint or having an affair, as best as we could hypothesize.
The state park contains the remnants of a defunt railroad, the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad, 
which includes extensive grading work (it’s very hilly there about 1/2 mile off the Ohio River) and a tunnel. At the left, you can see a photo of me entering the 600′ long, 7′ high tunnel. At right, here i am at the other side. We had a lot of fun walking around the park and looking at the falls.
In tomorrow’s installment of the vacation review, i will talk about our 11-mile, 5-hour hike, partly on one of the most rugged trails (rated ‘Extremely Rugged’) in all of the Indiana State Parks.
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2 Comments »
on 09 May 2007 at 12:28 pm 1.
Amanda said …
Thanks for the vacation post. I love the pic. of you and Emily. We want to go to Clifty Falls sometime.
on 10 May 2007 at 12:30 am 2.
Michael J. said …
Clifty is a great park. I spent a whole lot of time there and think it’s truly amazing. My brother actually worked as a naturalist there while he was a junior at Hanover and he showed me the insides and out of the entire park campus.