Camping – Fall Creek Falls 2008

The family went camping last weekend to Fall Creek Falls TN State Park, which is really only 2 hours away.  We chose last weekend for a few different reasons.  1).  Because it gets cool enough to warrant a fire in morning/night, but still warm enough in the day to allow short-sleave shirts.  2).  The Fall colors and foilage was absolutly beautiful.  Finally, 3).  Because it’s just about off-season, and there weren’t alot of people there.

Now, it wasn’t always fun and games.  The first night got down to 35 degrees F!  We were freezing in our tent!  The rest of the nights got cold, but it wasn’t that bad.

To start off, here are some pics of the campsite.  We chose a decent sized campsite, though the ground was about 5 degrees off level.  What does that mean?  It means, you woke up on the other side of the tent in the morning, because you are sloooowly moving down.  🙂  Our tent was a little too big, because the backside of the tent dropped from a graceful 5 degree downgrade, to a steep 25 degree downgrade.  🙂

 

The first night, we lost about $20 in food.  While I secured our dry goods and supplies, I thought the internal cooler latch would be secured enough to not do anything with it.  Well, our little campsite bandit, given the name of “foody”, (see below), decided to open up our cooler and take 3 packages of hotdogs, a large pack of cheese, 15 sausages, and 9 eggs!  Can you believe that?  We were so put-out.

The campsite Bandit strikes again!  We were NOT fooled a second night!  The 2nd night, Foody didn’t get any of our food!  Mua ha ha ha!  Of course, the dogs were a little put out, since we WAS able to get a hold of our dog food canister.  (SIGH)

 

Here is Tammy making a beautiful meal!  That night, we had Cooked Ham and Mashed Potatoes.  Yum!!

Now THIS is some REAL coffee, people! 

Here is Amanda, starting to build a fire for the next dinner.  I’m helping her move the logs around to get better air between the logs.  What’s the three ingredients to a fire, honey?  That’s right!  Oxygen (Air), Fuel (Wood), and Heat (flame).  My kids are such good students when it comes to Pyro damaging flames.  I’m so proud!

And finally, the real reason why people go to Fall Creek Falls, is the sheer beauty of the park.  I’m not going to post any of the waterfalls, as the low water tables will disappoint all of you.  It was really just a trickle.