Patapsco Valley State Park, Ellicott City, MD

Looking for a nice place to hike, fish, picnic, camp, boat, and bike? Patapsco Valley State Park has many wonderful opportunities to be out in nature. One of the more popular trails is the Cascade Falls trail which is a 2.1 mile loop that is moderate in difficulty, and has a nice small waterfall that kids can play in. The water is no more than about 2.5 feet deep and is a nice first experience with waterfalls. It is not a really large area (the falls) and can get crowded at times, but people seem to move in and out of the area within 15 minutes or so, allowing for pockets of less crowded time.

In addition to the hike, there are also places that you can go right into the water and play where it is shallow. We saw kids of all ages splashing around, but because it is such a large park, there was plenty of room for people to spread out and have their own space. One thing to take into account is that there are several entrances to the different trails, and you should make sure to find the parking area that is best for where you want to enter. I believe that some entrances are in different cities, so plan ahead to know where you want to go.

Using Waze, we typed in Cascade Falls Trail rather than Patapsco Valley State Park in order to get directions to the trail we were looking for. There is a small entrance fee for cars coming in ($2 for Maryland residents).

Website: http://dnr.maryland.gov/publiclands/Pages/central/patapsco.aspx

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