Upper South

Moonbows & the Gorge

Red River Gorge to Cumberland Falls

Open the interactive map →

Drive

Slade → Cumberland Falls

Distance

~150 miles

Time

2 days

Highways

KY 11 · KY 30 · KY 90

Avoids

I-75 (mostly)

Region

Upper South

Kentucky's sandstone country brackets this drive: the Red River Gorge's hundred-plus natural arches at the top, and at the bottom Cumberland Falls, the Niagara of the South, which on clear full-moon nights throws a moonbow, one of the only reliably scheduled moonbows on Earth. Between them: a one-lane 1910 logging tunnel, the climbers' pizza basecamp at Miguel's, and Renfro Valley, where a barn dance has been on the air since 1939.

📍 Daniel Boone National Forest waysides; the moonbow schedule is posted by the park like show times.

The drive, segment by segment

The Gorge

Slade → Beattyville · ~30 mi

Nada Tunnel, the arch, the Sky Lift, and Miguel's parking lot full of rope bags.

• 🛸Nada Tunnel — Red River Gorge

  A 1910 logging tunnel, one lane, twelve feet wide, unlit; honk, commit, and enter the Gorge the correct way.

• 🌲Natural Bridge & Sky Lift — Slade

  A 65-foot sandstone arch you can stand atop, with a 1960s chairlift for the unrepentant; the original gateway to Gorge country.

• 🍺Miguel's Pizza — Slade

  The climbers' basecamp since the '80s: pizza by the acre, gear shop, camping out back, and the world's forearms comparing notes.

• 🌿Gorge overlooks — Daniel Boone NF

  More than a hundred natural arches in one plateau; Chimney Top and Sky Bridge deliver the postcard for a short walk.

Hill Country 11

Beattyville → Renfro Valley · ~60 mi

Three Forks country and the two-lane hills to the 1939 barn-dance compound.

• 🎸Renfro Valley — Mount Vernon

  Kentucky's Country Music Capital by state decree: the Barn Dance has run since 1939 and the Gatherin' still broadcasts.

To the Falls

Renfro Valley → Cumberland Falls · ~60 mi

Down past Corbin to the big water and, moon willing, the moonbow.

• 🌲Cumberland Falls moonbow — Corbin

  A 125-foot curtain, the Niagara of the South; on clear full-moon nights the mist throws a white moonbow, posted on the park calendar like a show.

Worth a detour

• Fitchburg Furnace — A colossal twin iron furnace of 1869 standing alone in the woods, the largest of its kind ever built; industry as ruin-porn cathedral.
• White Hall — Cassius Marcellus Clay's mansion near Richmond: emancipationist publisher, duelist, minister to Russia, and a house as outsized as the résumé.