state parks project, part 19: charlestown

Before we took this trip, out of the four parks we were planning to visit, I was least excited about Charlestown State Park. Not that I thought there was anything bad about it; I just didn't find anything that excited me too much. (That said, even the most boring state park visit is a pretty great walk in the woods.) In the end, though, it might be the one I enjoyed the most.

We picked an easy trail, the Rose Island Loop Trail, because it was the only trail that offered access to the Ohio River, and we were still feeling a little bummed about the closed trail at O'Bannon Woods the day before. But of course there was a catch: To get to the easy trail, we had to take a rugged trail. It wasn't rugged because there were obstacles or anything; that part of the trail was paved. Nope, this trail was rugged in the sense of it basically going straight down (and then straight up on the way back!) for a little over half a mile. It was HARD! I find it more difficult to go down steep inclines than to go up them (probably because I'm not too worried about falling up!), and this one was especially hard. Even Henry was complaining about his hips hurting on the way down.

Once we got to the bottom of the rugged trail, we had to cross a bridge to get to Rose Island. The bridge was reclaimed from a different bridge in the area that had been deemed unusable. The state took it apart, restored it, and installed it here, over Fourteenmile Creek. There used to be a suspension bridge over Fourteenmile Creek, but it was washed away in the flood of 1937.

The 1937 flood that washed away the suspension bridge also totally wiped out the Rose Island Amusement Park. In its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s, people took steamboats to the landing to visit the park, or they could drive down the rough road to the suspension bridge. The park had a wooden roller coaster, a swimming pool, animals (including a pack of wolves, monkeys, and a black bear named Teddy Roosevelt), a dance hall, a hotel, and a shooting range (because that's just what you want when you are also keeping animals in the same area). The flood washed away almost all of it, but the parts that are left are pretty fascinating and offer enough of a hint that you can imagine what it must have been like to board the steamer for a day or a week of fun at the island.

One neat feature is that along the trail there are markers, poles with sort of buoys on them, that show how high the flood waters reached in 1937. It's a really great way to help visualize the damage all that water must have done. Some of them are low, but other markers close to the river are really high overhead. I really should have taken better pictures of those, sorry.

We really enjoyed exploring all the different sections. We ventured down to the river, where three columns stand as sentries over the ruined concrete walkway leading up from the landing. The boys jumped in the (filled) swimming pool and ran laps instead of swimming them. Henry lounged in the ruins of a hot tub (?), grinning at the very idea of taking a soak there. And then it was time to head back over the bridge and up the steep hill. To give you an idea of just how hard that climb was, we saw kids on the way down just sitting or laying on the path, refusing to climb any further, and on the way up we saw the same thing. Even Max laid down for a little while.

But eventually we made it back to the car, and we stopped off at an overlook for a view of the Ohio River, and then we made our way out of the park. Not a minute too soon, because the line of cars waiting to get into the park (they were having some sort of trick-or-treat event) was astonishing.

One last little note: We got back to our rental, exhausted and sweaty, and we all just sat there for a minute contemplating the idea of spending another night away from home. And then, totally spur of the moment, we took a vote and unanimously decided to just head for home instead so we could sleep in our own beds, even if it was late by the time we got home. Thus ensued about 45 minutes of frantically packing all our stuff, getting the dog ready, stripping all the beds and doing all the check-out stuff for the house, then piling our sweaty selves into the van. We got home around 10:30, and the boys immediately went up to bed, but each one of them separately told me this morning how happy they were to have woken up at home. Pretty sure Charlie was pleased about that development too!

See also: SPP1, SPP2, SPP3, SPP4, SPP5, SPP6, SPP7, SPP8, SPP9, SPP10, SPP11, 
SPP12, SPP13, SPP14, SPP15, SPP16, SPP17, SPP18.