You smell the two-stroke exhaust before you even see Cagles Mill Lake. Trucks line up. Propellers chew weeds. Honestly, most folks aren't hiking deep trails out here they haul pontoons, speedboats, and battered jon boats down the concrete ramps to spend six straight hours baking in the sun, tubing, or drifting over submerged tree stumps for channel catfish and crappie. Up off the shoreline, the aquatic center pool swarms with screaming kids under the water slide by noon, while campers basically park RVs awning-to-awning in the modern electric loops, running generators and frying bluegill on grease-stained picnic tables. The rest of the crowd heads down the road toward Cataract Falls, where Mill Creek plunges over two separate limestone ledges, churning up brown froth, misting the red covered bridge, soaking the wooden observation decks, and slicking up the exposed shale with river sludge that takes out at least a couple of bad ankles every weekend.

People scramble around the fence line to snap quick waterfall photos from the upper overlook, and then they usually leave because the lower falls look pretty much identical when the water is low. Bring bug spray or the deer flies near the water will bite clean through your socks.

State park permits can be purchased at any of the state park property locations across Indiana. State park permits can also be ordered online by visiting the INDIANA ENTRANCE FEE web page.