Back in August, the two oldest had a turn spending a few weeks with the grandparents in Alabama. When we met in Marianna, Florida to get them back, we popped over to Falling Waters State Park for a quick glimpse of Florida's tallest waterfall. Located just south of I -10, where US highway 231 crosses the interstate, the park is small but has a few trails and camping spots for tents and RVs.
We drove down to the parking lot for the falls and were greeted at the head of the trail by a beautiful butterfly garden. We spent several minutes looking around and trying to capture butterfly pictures without any luck. They also had a nice board listing the types of butterflies that you see in the area, so we learned a few new ones and were able to identify what we were seeing. Next we continued down the trail.
The trail at Falling Waters State Park splits into three branches each of which are under a quarter of a mile. First we chose to take the left hand branch toward the sinkholes. There are a variety of them in the area, we were able to see natural rock bridges left when several areas had collapsed, and Kate in particular found them to be extraordinarily interesting. After exploring that area we took the path down to the lower falls. The reason that this waterfall is the tallest in Florida isn't because the land is that high in elevation, but rather because the water over the years has created a sinkhole that falls 100 feet and has created a circular hole 20 feet across. Unfortunately for us it had been a very dry summer, and so the natural falls was down to a faint trickle along the rock face. We hope for another chance to see it when the water is actually flowing. We skipped the upper path as there wasn't really anything much to see.
As this isn't out of our way on our trips to Alabama and back and made for a pit stop of about half an hour, I'm sure we'll check this out again, and the camping area looked really nice so I hope to be able to camp there sometime. I would suggest calling 850-638-6130 ahead of time to check water levels before making the trip, however it would be a great area to spend a half a day or a day exploring. If you too would like to visit the address to Falling Waters State Park is 1130 State Park Road, Chipley, Florida 32428. Entrance is $5 a vehicle and they are open from 8 to sunset every day.
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