Eno River State Park

Moving right along through the North Carolina state parks with the kids this year and the next stop was the Eno River State Park in Durham, North Carolina.

If you have never visited, this place is really fabulous and the girls had a great time spending the day here. We packed a bag full of lunch and snacks (as you do when ever you go ANYWHERE with three kids) and we headed out.

We stopped at the visitors center first to grab some park maps and take a peek at the small display area that they have set up there. The woman working in the park office was very nice, answered all of our questions and gave my smallest a sticker featuring North Carolina wildlife.

Our favorite part was “Possum Pete” who is amusingly featured with a park ranger hat and holding a cane fishing pole.

We snagged some free NC State park bracelets on the way out, had our picture taken on the cool bench pictured below and headed to the lower parking lot which is closer to the trail heads.

One small complaint that I would like to note here. When you park and head toward the picnicking area it is not at all clear in which direction you should go to lead you to the trails – even with the map it is a bit confusing. We had to ask a ranger if we were headed in the right direction but we finally found the beginning of the trail we wanted.

The very first thing that you encounter once you get to the river is this swinging suspension bridge that you must cross in order to get to the trails on the other side of the river.

It may not appear to be very long or high in these photos but I assure you, if you have a member of your party who is even remotely afraid of heights, you may not get them to walk across it. It also moves as you walk and when a large group of people are going together, there is quite a bit of motion. My oldest balked at the first sight of it and refused to walk across it at first. It look a bit of convincing and she finally did it (note the VERY unhappy expression on the kid far right in the picture) but I thought perhaps our day was over before it began at this point.

After the drama of the bridge, the park and trails are well kept and beautiful. We saw turtles, butterflies and a heron fishing for his/her lunch.

The girls had a blast exploring and if you are interested in visiting here there are over 30 miles of trails and they even let you backcountry camp in some areas of the park.

On the way out we stopped at the wilderness cabin and they girls spent about an hour here playing while my husband fished along the bank of the river. They enjoyed pretending that we lived here and it was a quiet place the day we went.