Fall Creek Falls

A friend of ours asked if we wanted to go camping with a group, and we jumped on the chance. The last time we went camping, we were still in Provo, and Lindsay-less. We went this past weekend, and it was pretty fun. Mostly. Over all.

We went to Tennessee's Fall Creek Falls State Park, which is about two and a half hours away from us. A trip to the library before hand to get some unseen DVDs helped Lindsay with the long drive. And it helped us, too, because she, of course, wouldn't nap in the car. She hasn't since infancy, which pretty much sucks.

We arrived at the campground safe and sound. People had already started arriving. That evening was pretty low key. Setting up tents, campfires with damp wood, foil dinners, smores afterwards. It was pretty classic and nothing went wrong.

I tried to put Lindsay down early because she didn't have her afternoon nap, but five minutes I heard crying from the tent. So out she came for the smores! That's probably the real reason she woke up. But even afterwards she wouldn't go to sleep. I laid down with her for an hour or two in the tent. I don't know if the campground was too noisy, or it was just the fact that it was her first time camping, but it took her a while to go to sleep. It was probably ten before I snuck her into the pack 'n play, and we finally got to go to sleep.

But then at 11:30 she started howling inconsolably. The campground was silent so I felt bad for the probably hundreds of people she was waking up. Singing, talking, nothing worked to calm her down so I had to take her into the car for another hour, and even then she wouldn't stop freaking out until I turned on the portable DVD player. After she calmed down I took her back to the tent. She finally went to sleep next to me, stealing my sleeping bag and sleeping pad, so I was on the ground using her baby blankets to keep warm. They talk about the ups and downs of parenting. Well, that night was one of the downs.

In the morning everything was better, besides being generally tired. We struck camp so we wouldn't have to worry about getting back in time after hiking.

First we went to the namesake Fall Creek Falls. It's 256 feet high, and it's actually the highest falls in the eastern U.S. We hiked to the bottom. It was only .4 miles, so it wasn't a big deal.

At the bottom we had lunch and enjoyed the cool spray off the falls. We also saw a dead beaver in the water. Actually, someone said it was a dead platypus, but we wised up when we realized that we are not actually in Australia. I guess the beaver tail did kind of look like a huge platypus beak if you squinted your eyes and turned your head just right. Whatever it's species, we wondered if it had fallen to it's death over the falls.

Lindsay and I shod our shoes and waded in the water. She liked it a little too much, because she was pretty upset when we took her out.

The hike back up was fast, but I'm so out of shape I'm still a little sore from it. And another funny anecdote: The same people who thought that the mystery dead animal was a platypus, also were hiking straight up the hill instead of taking the nice switchbacks. He was pretty surprised when we passed him up. And I'll be pretty surprised if he doesn't get a bad case of poison ivy from the whole patch of it on the hill he was climbing up trying to go faster.

After the falls hike, we wanted to hit a geocache, so we got an easy one on a bike trail that we could use the stroller with. The kids enjoyed that one because there were a lot of toys in that ammo box.

We also did a virtual cache that was at the top of a firetower. I don't know that we would have ever known it was there if not for geocaching. It was very cool. The view was amazing. That's the cool thing about geocaching. You find things and places that you never would have found before. This place was off of a gravel road that didn't look very public friendly, but I glad we struck out and found it.

After that we headed home, and none too soon. A big thunderstorm made it's way past us when we stopped for dinner. I'm glad we didn't have to drive through that.

So after all that, I'm cautious about going camping again. I really liked it, but that night was really hard. Maybe she'll get better at it.

PS--Check out the captions on the photos.