Route 374 rides south through lodge-and-cabin country toward Cedar Falls, and this segment covers the park's best practical secret: Hocking Hills Lodge, a couple of minutes west off Route 664, opened in 2022 on the footprint of the lodge lost to fire in 2016. Its 81 rooms are for overnight guests, but the kitchen serves everyone — coffee, ice cream, and full dinners. One clarification matters for families: the lodge's Rock House Restaurant is named in tribute to the Rock House cave miles to the north; it is a dining room, not a cliff cave. The Grandma Gatewood Trail walks the same valley below the road, and the segment closes with arrival cues for the Cedar Falls trailhead.
There's a hot dinner hiding along this leg, and it's worth marking even if you never stop. As you ride toward the junction country, you'll pass the entrance to the park's lodge off Route six sixty-four — new as these things go, opened in twenty twenty-two on the footprint of the old one lost to a fire in twenty sixteen, eighty-one rooms — and its kitchen serves everybody, overnight guest or not: morning coffee, afternoon ice cream, a proper dinner when the day's done. Small warning for the back seat, though. The lodge restaurant is called the Rock House Restaurant, named in honor of the cave called Rock House farther north. It's a tribute, not a tunnel — so nobody should promise the kids stone windows with their fries.
Here's something else that lodge parking lot is good for, and most folks don't know it. From the far end of it, a footbridge called the Hemlock Bridge strides out high over a hemlock ravine — the park's "Indiana Jones bridge," and worth a look on its own — and the trail beyond it drops down to Whispering Cave. That's the park's newest wonder, opened back in twenty seventeen: a recess cave three hundred feet wide, second in size only to Ash Cave, with a hundred-foot ribbon of water drizzling over its rim — a full curtain after a good rain, barely a trickle in a dry spell. Now, straight talk: getting down there is a real hike — stairs and a steep gorge, a mile and a half round trip or more, rated Difficult. Not a stroller walk, not for tired legs at the end of a long day. So I'm not sending you down it now. File it away. Some morning when your group's got fresh boots and time to spare, it's a beauty worth the climb.
Now the intel that actually matters. Old Man's Cave is the busiest trailhead in these hills, and it earns it — the gorge below it is the postcard the whole region is printed on. On October weekends its lot is generally spoken for by mid-morning. If that's your day, you've got two outs: arrive early and beat the rush, or let the free weekend shuttle do the parking for you — it runs on summer and fall weekends, looping from downtown Logan out to Ash Cave with every big trailhead in between, this lodge included, and it doesn't cost a dime.
Here's your park-here: the visitor-center lot comes up on the left along Route six sixty-four — wide, paved, and well marked. Pull in there and lace up. The walk waiting below it is the one that made these hills famous, and I'll let it speak for itself.