Pennyrile State Park 2021

You may have seen in an earlier post that my family and I had plans to travel to Hawaii in 2020. For obvious reasons, that trip never happened. In fact, 2020 because the year of canceled trips. A tour I had planned to join in Bolivia got canceled due to political unrest. Then COVID swooped in, cancelling the Hawaii trip as well as the tour I had planned to join (in place of Bolivia) through Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. We had intended to reschedule Hawaii for 2021, but we just didn’t feel comfortable enough with traveling yet due to COVID levels still being rather high. However, it was not a year of NO travel this time.

My mom and I decided to take a small trip to a state park for a few days, resurrecting our tradition of annual trips together. We decided to rent a cabin to make sure we had access to our own bathroom and our own kitchen for safety. Since we would be in a state park, most of our activities where we might encounter other people would be outdoors where the transmission rates would be minimal. We decided on Pennyrile State Park in Western Kentucky. With a lake and several trails, there would be plenty to keep us entertained.

Renting a cabin had another added benefit. It turned out the weather forecast for that week was pretty bad. Lots of really heavy storms, which would have been unsafe for sleeping in a tent. But a cabin gave us a safe, dry place for when the weather was less than pleasant.

There are several trails in the state park, and we hiked most of them. The majority of trails are less than two miles. The Lake Trail was 1.8 miles long and was one of the ways that we walked between our cabin and the lodge. As the name implies, it follows the circumference of the lake. Certain parts could get a bit slippery in the rain, so we did have to be careful. There was also one part that took us a couple of tries to figure out. We thought there was a sudden drop off that hikers had to leap across, and we did not feel comfortable with that, so we turned back. But when we approached the trail from the other side, we realized we had totally missed the actual path of the trail in that spot, and there was no drop off after all!

At similar length, the Pennyroyal Trail 1.4 miles. The description made it sound interesting, but it wasn’t that exciting. And it wasn’t well maintained that year either.

The longest trail we took was the Macedonia Trail. It is 6.5 miles and starts at the Macedonia Cemetery. We were able to do this trail on an unexpected sunny morning. It is actually several conjoined loops of different lengths, so you don’t have to do the full trail. We found an interesting lunch stop in the middle of a creek.

And here are some more hiking pictures from some of the other shorter trails, plus more from the Lake Trail. The only trail I think we didn’t do was the Pennyrile Nature Trail. It’s 13.5 miles and actually leads to Dawson Springs, a nearby community. We did not have time for that extensive of a hike.

The state park has a small boat rental facility where you can rent canoes, kayaks, or paddle boats. We chose to rent kayaks for a bit one afternoon. Boats with motors are not allowed on this lake, so it made for a very calm experience.

Finally, here are some of the meals we cooked while in our cabin. For breakfast, we usually just had oatmeal, perhaps with a scrambled egg on the side, and for lunch we packed peanut butter sandwiches and snacks for lunch on the go. Dinner was more exciting. Our first night, we ate Mediterranean Chicken Pitas with Campfire Cones for dessert (but cooked in an oven). For our second night, we made Shrimp Boil Packets with Dump Cake in a Mug for dessert. Our final dinner was Spicy Chicken Tacos with Banana Boats for dessert.

It was a simple trip, but nice to get away from home for a bit after not having been able to travel for a while. Pennyrile State Park has a lot of fun things to do, and I highly recommend it for a long weekend or a few days vacation. I would enjoy going back some day!