Hiking the Red River Gorge Loop in Kentucky (Gray’s Arch + Hanson’s Point) + post-hike FOOD!

The entire last part of the hike all I thought about was this food and I'm so excited right now. Yesterday we kicked off our mini Kentucky adventure by horseback riding and eating delicious food. Today we're going to head to what we hear is one of the most beautiful areas of the state, the Red River Gorge or as the locals call it the Red. This place is pretty crazy. So it's a huge rock climbing destination. It has tons of beautiful views and it's home to over 100 natural arches which is only to be surpassed in the U.S. by Arches National Park. The original plan for the day was just to check out some of the really popular spots in the park. They're all really quick and easy and short hikes but then we discovered the Red River Gorge loop which looked to be a bit more off the beaten path and still had a lot of cool things to see along the way. So the hike is 12.2 miles and it's a big loop as the name implies but look at these elevation changes. We're going to be going a total of 2,680 feet by the end of all of this. Also a little side note, our gimbal has died today. Not forever. I just forgot to charge it the last couple days so if our footage is a little shaky today and you see our arm coming straight out of the camera the entire video, that's why. As we mentioned before this trail is a loop but it's actually a kind of a patchwork of a bunch of different trails. So we just made it off the first leg of it to the actual loop part and we're gonna go left to do it clockwise. And we showed you all that elevation change on the all trails little graph thing. It looks like it's starting right now. We're catching our first glimpse of the arch we're going to called Gray's Arch. Apparently it's 50 feet tall and 80 feet wide. I hear that it doesn't look that big from up here but when you get down there it looks really huge. There it is right there. Super cool. 80 feet wide. It's giant. This arch is absolutely incredible. This is something you would expect to see in Utah or somewhere in the southwest not here in Kentucky. And there's actually like a four mile loop trail you can do just to this arch instead of doing the big 12 mile loop that we're doing. I think it has its own parking lot too. So we'll try to put all the details in the description for all the little trails below. And as we mentioned earlier there are over 100 arches in this park. Some of them are super easy to get to like a mile or less of hiking. So if you want something a little bit easier and less of a hike there are tons of options of arches to check out. So the arch is right here and now we're gonna pop back on to the main trail we were on and keep going this way. Well some bad news. It looks like we went the wrong way. We need to get back up here and keep going that way. Alright so here's where we messed up. We came from this direction up to here and we kept going that way because we saw the white blazes which is confusing because we kept seeing them even further down the trail. So we got a half mile down. Realized it. Hike another half mile back. So nothing like throwing an extra mile on a 12 plus mile hike already. But anyways we should have come up here turned left and then we'll be turning again right. I'm seeing it as an excuse to eat more food when we're done with this hike so I'm not too mad about it. This hike continues to impress. This is super cool part right here. Wow. You're just hiking under this like cavey overhang part. This is nuts. Trees have fallen down. This is cool. So a little detour you can take is you can go left right here and follow this to a spot called Hanson's View I think. We had read on some of the reviews that this was a highlight of the trail for some people so we're pretty excited. Now this little detour was super worth it. Basically 360 views of the whole grand view of the gorge, rock faces, the autumn colors. Yeah this is absolutely amazing. We have four more miles to go. I guess we've gone about nine miles now because we had that extra mile we didn't plan on earlier. I'm so pooped. The hunger pains are getting real now. Oh man we are so tired but we're kind of almost there. I'm stuck. Graceful. We made it out alive you guys. It took us about seven and a half hours to do a little over 13 miles with an extra mile in there by accident. But we're pooped man. It felt like we were going so slow. Yeah. It was kind of the never-ending hike. Yeah. It was beautiful. For sure. Absolutely beautiful. The best part was definitely the arch and then the overlook which were towards the beginning of the hike. Yeah. Pretty much the rest of the hike was just in the woods but it was really pretty with the fall colors and you could sometimes get like a peak of like views. Yeah we wanted to do get some miles in so we did the full loop but if we were going to do it again we would probably definitely right after the overlook when you come back there is a turn off for the pinch them tight trail that'll cut you down it'll cut off the uh basically the right half of the trail so um about six miles or so which again it's beautiful but if i did it again we'd probably do that and come back a little quicker so. But no regrets. No regrets. We worked up quite an appetite though so we are gonna go stuff our faces now but first we have to drive by or through a very interesting feature in this area. So if you remember during our South Dakota vlogs at Custer State Park we went through this really cool tunnel called the Neal's Eye Tunnel. Crazy. With the Red River Gorge they also have a tunnel and this one's called the Nada Tunnel and it is 900 feet long 12 feet wide and 13 feet high and it's a logging tunnel that was built between 1910 and 1912 and it looks really cool so we're gonna drive through that on our way to our I guess dinner now. Here we go. Oh spooky. I don't I don't think you can see our faces at all but oh my gosh this one I would argue is cooler yeah than the one the Neal's Eye one because it is fully enclosed and it's just rocks sticking out. It's way longer and then also the Neal's one there's a tunnel part but then once you get past the tunnel part it's probably 100 feet or so which this one's 900 feet. Once you get through that part it opens up and there's like basically a skylight coming through. This one's full-on tunnel. This is 900 feet. Crazy. Really awesome. All right for our very late meal of the day we're going with dinner. It was supposed to be lunch now it's dinner. We came to Red River Rock House. They have delicious stuff here so we're starting with chips. So we here. Yeah so we here. So we start with chips and guac and chips and salsa. They have a red and green. The cashier said that she likes the green better so we went with her suggestion. She said it's spicier. Our standard for chips and salsa and chips and guac is very very high being from Texas and wow these both look absolutely bomb. Salsa is excellent. Oh here comes the spice. It is a little spicy. Apparently these are hand-cut chips so I guess they make them here but man this salsa is so nice and cold and very flavorful. So good. That is awesome guac. Oh man it's limey and creamy. The entire last part of the hike all I thought about was this food and I'm so excited right now. This makes my heart melt. So I got a burrito obviously. I love it when they toast the outside of it make it nice and crispy. I got beef in there. There's rice, sour cream. I got green salsa in there as well. Beans. You know all your usual all your usual burrito suspects. Oh it looks so juicy and good. It's huge. They say it's a fatty burrito on there and that's exactly what I need. And I got me some braised pork tacos. There's a bunch of pork on here and it looks like it's been stewed. I guess that's what braised means. In some sort of deliciousness and then there's cotija cheese I believe and some cilantro and then added some of the green sauce on top and some lime. Let's eat. The pork is just super super super soft. Oh man that's really good flavor and the lime just like pops on it. I'm so happy. I can't stop saying how happy I am but this really kept me going for the last like seven miles. This is gonna hit the spot. Lots of onions in there. The beef has tons of flavor. Just a great everything you want in a burrito. Again I'm so happy This place was super solid. Everything was absolutely delicious and originally our plan was just to get dinner out but then on the hike we realized we haven't had ice cream in two weeks and that's two weeks too long so we're gonna go change that. All right we drove about an hour from the Red River Gorge to Lexington Kentucky to come to a spot called Crankin' Boom for ice cream and this location is in what I think is called the Distillery District and it looks like such a cool area. It's a bunch of old warehouses, strung lights, looks like there's bars, restaurants, coffee shops. It just has a really neat vibe. It's unfortunately dark so we can't really check it out but we wish we had more time in the area so we could explore it more but for now the ice cream will have to do. So my two flavors I got. Very excited about it. I think this first one is one of their special seasonal flavors. It's spiced cookie so it's a cinnamon base with spiced cookie crumbles in there. Heck yeah. And this one is blueberry lime cheesecake. Sounded super interesting. Again you can see some chunks up in there. Blueberry, limey, cheesy. That's good. That one's really good too. That one's fall right there in an ice cream scoop. Both of these are awesome. Might be a little weird of a mix together but that doesn't bother me. Don't mind that we've just pushed all of our bedding over to the side to try to look like we're neat in here. It's all a lie. The bed's all right there. We figure we're about to go sleep in it anyway so just. I also got kind of a weird combination. I got Kentucky blackberry and buttermilk. I think it's blackberry and then salted caramel. They both just sounded really good to me. The only downside is there are not chunks in my ice cream and I love chunks in my ice cream but I think all the chunks were not Katherine friendly unfortunately. Oh yeah that caramel is really good. It's not super salty. It's pretty sweet actually. I love caramel ice cream so this is the bomb. Oh that blackberry buttermilk one is delicious. Oh wow. Very blackberry-y. Then our descriptive words aren't very good tonight because we are so tired from that hike. It has a really good blackberry flavor but it also kind of has like maybe a little bit of like a tang from the buttermilk. I think buttermilk might be slightly tangy but it's incredible. I've had a blast during our two days here in Kentucky but we know we have barely scratched the surface. We got to come back for our national park. I got to go to the Louisville Slugger factory and museum thing. A bunch of other stuff. I'm sure there's a lot of delicious food we did not get to eat but we are so glad we were able to swing two days here. That wasn't even part of the plan so we're really glad that we were able to explore even if it was just for two days. We're now going to go spend some time with family for a bit and then start making our way back down to Texas for the holidays but don't you worry we're going the weird route. That doesn't make any sense but we figured we might as well hit up two new states on the way back. So next time you see us we will be in a brand new state for us. If you have any guesses let us know below. Okay we have a little bit of a not a debate or a contest or I don't know what to call it but what kind of what kind of dipper are you? So this is Catherine. That's Catherine. This is me. So which one are you? Let us know. Do you dip or do you scoop? Yeah. I don't really like the chunks so I dip. But where's any flavor in this? You get like the juices. You get a little bit of juice in there and then. Okay that's not your normal one. You put a little more on there for the camera. This is usually me though right here. This is what I like to do. No not that much but I do do right there. You do do.