Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our birthdays together, often traveling beyond Indianapolis to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip -— partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never seen before. That’s every May for me and every October for her. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Last weekend it was Anne’s turn. This year she wanted to see one of Indiana’s state parks that we hadn’t previously visited…

…and the winner was Clifty Falls State Park, two hours south of Indy. It’s among Indiana’s smaller parks, but Anne rather liked the idea of viewing pretty waterfalls on her special day. Unfortunately Mother Nature denied her birthday wish, but at least we got some steps in and enjoyed some cool autumn air.

Clifty Falls claim four waterfalls total: of those, two are accessible only by trails classified on their brochure map as “Rugged” or worse. That didn’t used to be a deterrent when we were slightly younger and lighter — Turkey Run, the site of Anne’s annual family reunions for 60+ years now, has never daunted us with its ruggedness, not even the notorious Trail 3 and its precipice that requires a ladder and once imperiled her brother when they were kids. But ever since the times when two different parks actively tried to murder her — one not far from home, the other way out in Montana — we’ve accepted that some of the most beautiful natural sights in every state or national park are exclusive engagements only for thin, healthy people. Mother Nature is rather capricious with her velvet ropes. Nevertheless, we figured we’d saunter as far as we could and see what we’d see.

Unfortunately we both slept really poorly Friday night, snoozed a little extra, and left home an hour later than we’d meant to. That actually worked out: we pulled into the park’s south entrance and parked three minutes before the nature center opened at 10. The li’l visitor center was packed with quite a few exhibits for kids and taxidermy fans.

Then we ventured forth down Trail 1, which began right outside. I refuse to call what we did “leaf-peeping”, a term I’d never heard before until we binged The West Wing and President Bartlett scoffed at it. A few Indy journalists have tried normalizing it in recent years despite certain states using it a pejorative to mock annoying tourists. I maintain in all its wide and varied forms and variations, the English language has yet to produce a serious, respectable phrase with the word “peeping” in it.

Thus we went a-frolicking in the fall foliage:

From there we drove toward the north end of the park, where most of the falls are. The leaves were more green than red because we’d arrived a bit early in the season, when all the ordinary chlorophyll shades hadn’t given way to the more ostentatious end of the spectrum.

We parked at the lot nearest Big Clifty Falls and headed down the trail, only to find that particular path doesn’t actually let you see the falls. At most, it runs above and off to the side. We could hear water trickling down, but couldn’t witness it for ourselves.

Taken the other direction, the same trail heads toward, over, around, and in front of Little Clifty Falls. Despite the moisture implied in the name, several consecutive days without rain caused the water flow to dry up. Yet again, we were denied a true waterfall sighting.

Total waterfalls enjoyed: zero. We tried.

Our mostly unfortunate timing brought us one pleasant surprise: one of our fellow travelers on Trail 7 was a retiree who’d been a longtime employee of the park and knew all its ins and outs. He’d been there way back in the ’70s and remembers when a tornado wrecked the area in 1974 and everything had to be rebuilt. He remembers the good and the bad of the epic blizzard of ’78. He still visits regularly and showed us his own phone videos of Little Clifty Falls gushing at full strength back in August, after rains had been pummeling Indiana for weeks without letting up. The unusually relentless storms caused unprecedented flooding disasters statewide and tragically left more than a few Hoosiers dead. On the upside, this man’s August waterfall footage looked really impressive.

Whenever other pedestrians passed us a bit too quickly without bothering to stop and enjoy the cliffs and/or nature for a minute, he’d gently admonish them and offer to give them the same free tour-guide chat he’d given us. A few took him up on it; most didn’t, as if they were late for an appointment somewhere in the middle of the forest and had no choice but to keep moving forward. Maybe they were too disappointed to stick around and had decided to rush back to their vehicles in a huff and take their leaf-peeping business elsewhere.