Buffalo Trace Park

I really enjoyed this park. We’ve been a couple of times over the past few months with our 5 yo son. They have several okay areas and paths for him to ride his ziggle. It’s pretty big which is great so he doesn’t get bored with just one spot. Both times there were a lot of campers there.

My boyfriend and I decided to head out to Buffalo Trace Park for the afternoon on Saturday after reading that they had a public beach, petting zoo, and paddleboat rental. The drive from Jeffersonville to the park which is in Palmyra took around 45 minutes. Admission per carload for residents is $ 3, nonresidents $ 5, and free for veterans and active duty military. As we headed over to the lake the first thing that we noticed was that the boat rental, public beach, and the petting zoo were closed. This might have been an issue of being off season however it was over 80 degrees out and their camp ground was open and packed with people. We checked the bulletin board to see if there was a notice stating when these items would open but there wasn’t one. The public beach was actually gated off so that it was inaccessable. However, this wasn’t a terrible disappointment because it turned out to be an extremely small dirt area with two lifeguard chairs. Not what I would call a beach. It also wasn’t a lake that I would want to get in. The water was so dirty that parts of it were actually black. The boat rental also looked disappointing. The paddle boats were extremely old and in poor condition. From what I could see through the chain link fence the petting zoo was very small. The park did have several playgrounds, a basketball court, and tennis courts. There were also quite a few people riding bikes around the lake. We didn’t go up into the campgrounds but we could hear the extremely loud sound of the people in it from across the lake. We could also see that it was absolutely packed with RV’s and tents. All in all I wasn’t terribly impressed but perhaps if you come when everything is open and you bring your tent or RV you might have a nice time here.