{"id":1760,"date":"2026-04-17T13:42:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T18:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/?p=1760"},"modified":"2026-04-17T19:28:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T00:28:26","slug":"natural-bridge-va","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/natural-bridge-va\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural Bridge, VA"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the way back from that 2026 “epic” road trip<\/A> that started with a visit to Douthat State Park, VA<\/A>, I stopped for a day at Natural Bridge State Park, VA<\/A>. This area felt a bit more commercialized than other state parks I’ve visited, which is just an observation, not a criticism. Still, at that there were some good trails to get out into the woods.<\/p>\n

The signature attraction is The Natural Bridge, a rock formation left when an underground river cut away the rock, leaving a bridge. Getting to the bridge required going down (and back up) a lot<\/I> of steps, 137 according to the park web site.
\n<\/A>
\nThe path is mostly paved, so you don’t need your hiking shoes. Pretty quickly you come to The Bridge, which from here is more of a “natural underpass”.
\n<\/A>
\nIt’s actually pretty awesome, I couldn’t help being in awe of that rock overhead.
\nThe trail contines past there and ends at Lace Falls.
\n<\/A>
\nI was advised at the extensive visitor center that it was best to drive to the other trails in the park, which I concurred with because getting there involved some stretches of busy highway. So it was off to the Blue Ridge Trail.
\n<\/A>
\nNothing to this point indicated that the hotel had a connection to the trail, had I known I’d have just walked from there.
\nAs at Douthat, flowers were blooming everywhere:
\n<\/A>
\nI kept trying to get a picture of the numerous butterflies, but they wouldn’t stay put and a cell phone makes a lousy wildlife camera. I did catch one, sort of:
\n<\/A>
\nThe trail led up to a ridge with a view:
\n<\/A>
\nThere is an adjacent Thistle Ridge Trail and disc golf course:
\n<\/A>
\nThis is one course where you’ll probably want your hiking shoes:
\n<\/A>
\nI didn’t try to play the course as I was only there for one day. Many of the goals looked tricky to this novice, and just a little overshoot would have you diving down a hill into the woods (hopefully not head first).
\nFrom there is was over to the Buck Hill trail and more up and down:
\n<\/A>
\nFinally, I wrapped up the day at the short Skyline Trail. There’s a discovery area at the trailhead:
\n<\/A>
\nAnd, as you might expect from the name, there is a view of the skyline:
\n<\/A>
\nThis park was a bit of an exception in that I was able to cover all the published trails in one day and then followed up with a late lunch from the Natty B Cafe<\/A> just up road to the east. The salad and Turkey Reuben sandwich were quite good.<\/p>\n

There were very limited camping opportunities here, so I opted to stay at the Natural Bridge Hotel right by the Natural Bridge itself. The accommodations there weren’t as nice as I had at Douthat, but were adequate for the purpose, if a bit expensive compared to a campsite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the way back from that 2026 “epic” road trip that started with a visit to Douthat State Park, VA, I stopped for a day at Natural Bridge State Park, VA. This area felt a bit more commercialized than other state parks I’ve visited, which is just an observation, not a criticism. Still, at that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1760"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1775,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions\/1775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}