Day trip to get away from town allowed us to get some fresh air and attempt to cool off in the streams of higher elevation.
Recommendation is to get there early on the hot summer weekends. This turns out to be a great place for family to drive-in, park, picnic, and swim with easy access. We ended up just getting there right after they reached capacity so we didn’t have to wait that long to enter the park.
Since almost everyone was just picnicing and swimming, there were very few people actually hiking more that .5 mile from the parking lots. We took the hike up to the Jacobs Gorge overlook and continued up to the Chestnut Knob Overlook. It was hot, but a small springs along the trail and intermittent gust of winds maybe it not so bad.
After the out and back, we walked through the picnic area and followed the high shoals water fall trail. Numerous swimming holes followed the creek the entire trail to the waterfall. After a cardio stair set to the the top of the water creek, we relaxed in the very pretty stream and swimming holes at the lip of the water fall. Huge potholes lined the edges and all held healthy sized native trout.
We then made the long trail looping back to the car, seeing a a posse of horses playing in the stream. Getting back the the car, the majority of the families had cleared out, so we dove into the now empty stream again to cool off before the trip back into Charlotte.
