Valley Girl Views: Exploring Waterfalls Near World's End State Park

ROAD TRIP! Seven Waterfalls, and overlook, a visitors center, and a picnic lunch at Sones Pond

July 18 2021

We often take road trips on Sundays throughout the summer. After weeks of what feels like non stop rain, today we decided to visit some of the nearby waterfalls that normally would be pretty dry in the middle of July. As we expected, today they were all roaring. The trails were soaked, downed trees forced a few detours, and we were glad we had packed several outfits and pairs of shoes - but it was a great day for seeing waterfalls! It was not however, a great day for photographing them. They were running too fast, causing a "wash out", and the overcast, rainy, day made for very poor lighting in most of the areas we were hiking.

Downed trees forced two detours, taking us past the Canyon Vista and Rock Garden first thing in the morning, even though that had not been the original plan.

Finally we found a route to the parking area for the Rusty Run Falls. The "trail" is an old logging road - wide and mostly flat. It's less than 2 miles round trip

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2021/07/rusty-falls.html

Next was coal run falls - which is either three waterfalls, or one three tiered waterfall, I'm not really certain. We parked in a very small pull off along the road, and made the steep, slippery, climb down to the falls. All of the recent rain made this a very, very, slippery trek today. It was not an easy climb.

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2021/07/coal-run-falls.html

We had packed a picnic lunch for the trip, and once we saw the picnic tables at Sones Pond, we knew it would be the perfect spot for a picnic. Added bonus - there was a blueberry bush beside this mini pavilion.

Tamarack Falls is not visible from the road, and there is no trail leading to them, so we were completely unsure what to expect. We took a difficult, very wet, path in, and then found a much easier route out.

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2021/07/tamarack-falls.html

Alpine Falls was a relief at this point, because it had a trail! Two of them actually - an old logging path, which intersects with the Loyalsock Trail. Alpine falls is a short distance down the loyalsock trail. A short, steep, slippery distance - but it was an actual trail, which was nice at this point. We saw a bear on the way out of here. :-)

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2021/07/alpine-falls.html

There were not many geocaches in this trip for us, but there was a quick park and grab on our way from the Alpine Falls to Vinegar Falls.

https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC707HX_mill-creek-stink-run

At this point in our day, we were starting to get a little tired - making Vinegar Falls the perfect next stop. Its a roadside waterfall, with a pull off area along the road right nearby. The waterfall is on private property, but it's completely visible from the road.

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2021/07/vinegar-run-falls.html

Our next stop was at the visitors center for World's End State Park. There's a fossil based earthcache (geocache) based out of here.

While Dan worked on the cache, I found this shirt, with a map showing some of the sights along the Loyalsock Trail in this area.

And there's also a display of history

Along with a lot of taxidermized animals, books, charts, etc.

We took a quick walk down to the creek to finish the geocache:

From the visitors center, it's a short distance to the High Rock waterfall. You can just walk down the road and cross the creek to the trail from the parking area here (we did) or you can drive across the creek and park at the parking area right across from the trail.

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2021/07/high-rock-falls.html

Our plan was to hike to Cottonwood Falls next - but we had been soaking wet all day, and we were getting tired. We've hiked to Cottonwood many times in the past, and it's close enough, and easy enough to get to, that we can easily do it another day. So we stopped for ice cream at the snack shop instead.

One last waterfall - another roadside waterfall. Mineral Springs Falls.

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2021/07/mineral-spring-falls.html

Our plan had been to go from here to the Forksville General store for cheesesteaks - it's close by - but Dan took a wrong turn, and we decided that rather than backtrack, we'd head on home for the night. :-)

See our 2017 road trip to the Forksville General Store, and sights nearby, here:

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2017/09/road-trip-for-forksville-general-store.html

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