What's up!  We just got back from a weekend trip to The Red River Gorge.  This wasn't really a climbing trip but we scouted some areas, and tried a Via Farreta adventure.

As many have recommended, we checked out Muir Valley — one of the days.  The temperature was great!  Not too hot (yet), and not cold at all.

The approach was cool but a little longer than we thought it was gonna be.  They do, do a great job of maintaining it, though.

From a very first time experience, this is what I remember:

First, we drove to the entrance and parking lot area (easy to get to), paid for and got a receipt to put in the window ($15/each vehicle).  The guy working the payment was really nice.  He gave us directions and was very friendly/laid back.

We drove up to the overflow parking lot, as the lower one was full, and the second lots were filling quickly.

We saw a few climbers with their trunks open, getting their gear squared away to take to the valley.

Pretty much everyone and their grandma had a stickclip.  There were even ones to "borrow" at the entrance, which was cool.

We did get one (from Miguel's Gear Shop) which we will use more in Wisconsin for now.

As we walked through the parking lot (a very short distance) we came up to a pavilion where the Access Fund had a table with stickers, pamphlets, and a trivia question.  I'm not gonna post it here, but the answer was pretty cool!

Next, we started towards the path.  It broke off into a fork and we decided to go to the left (have to put the name in here).

I did have a guide book (thanks, Patrick!), so kind of looked at the map to get an idea of where we were going.

We walked through some woodsy paths (kind of like a mountain bike trail) and went down some sections of man-made stairs.

Then we got to a bridge or two and decided to stay to the left.  We did hear people on the right, but it looked sunnier on the left.

A couple people behind us said they were gonna try to go to (what was it), so we kind of went that way as well.

Went through some more trail, then finally saw the first wall!  It looked awesome.  Seemed taller than our home town walls (Devil's Lake).

Then, it all clicked... We saw some bolted routes!  I haven't seen one in real life, so this was cool.  They had a few eye bolts sticking out and we went and scoped them out.  The next ones had some bolt hangers.

The first climb we saw, there was a small rock set up like a step stool.

We just went up and touched the sandstone to see what it felt like.  Seemed way harder on the fingers than we were used to.

We kept walking to the left and saw some people climbing.  I think they said it was (fill in the blank).

We watched them climb, saw a snake, saw a tick, and looked more at the routes.

There was a cool part where the person was lowered, they didn't stick to the wall... But swung wayyyyy out towards the trees, then came right down on a rock.

After that, we decided to back track and go to the right.

Here we heard a lot more people.  There was a group climbing a wall (need to look up the name), and we watched them for a bit.

Due to time, we headed back and trekked back up the path and stairs.

All in all, it was a very cool glimpse of what Muir Valley offered.

We will definetaly need to make another trip where we can spend a day or two out there.

I think it said there were like, 3,500 climbs...?