Well, this place was *interesting*

Campground

This campground is quite large. You can get a good amount of walking in just trying to find all of the different sections of this campground. That being said, there’s some good sites and there are some terrible sites. The campsite we chose (site 62) was in loop “B”. According to the website, they said this was a slight incline.

Maybe we need to just get more blocks, since we maxed out these…

This section seemed like they had been working on it recently. A lot of mulch was laid down and the park itself was quite clean. The bathrooms were in good shape. Sites had a reasonable amount of space. But it’s obvious that they went with the “go with the flow” plan on site levelling. I guess we were spoiled by Sloppy Floyd State park and Cloudland Canyon in Georgia that did a fantastic job of levelling sites.

If it says “slight incline”, you may be dealing with what you see in our picture above. Moderate inclines are likely unusable in our opinion.

Campground Noise

While we do expect to hear a bit of noise from local highways or airport noise, I simply forgot to take into consideration how close our campsite was to the main road.

The main road is windy and kind of fun depending on the vehicle you’re driving. That’s apparently well-known to the locals who like to cruise this road often. We heard sooo many folks driving up and down with their hot rods, motorcycles, and diesel trucks that I was getting a bit frustrated. But I’ll say that *maybe* it was because it was the first few days of spring. Probably not.

We ended up staying 2 nights and decided it was best to move on. Honestly, our night at the parking lot of the Bass Pro shop in Chattanooga was just as loud, but I wasn’t paying anything to stay there. Ah well.

If you’re going to stay here, I’d recommend loops that are further away from the road so you won’t have the same issue.

Hiking

We honestly didn’t have a ton of time to do some of the hiking here. We’re heading into the “spring showers” time, so nearly every other day is rain. We did a few miles on the Paw Paw trail that got us to one of the overlooks, but there were certainly a lot more trails that could be explored

If you’re not into hiking, just the walks around the campsite were pretty long! We had a 2.7 mile “hike” just to see some of the different camping areas.

Hiking Poles with a Camera Mount!

In our last hiking trip at Cloudland Canyon in Georgia, it was pretty obvious we needed a few additional pieces of hiking gear. The first one was hiking poles. Up until now only Gary had a hiking pole, and he had only been using one.

Any time we’re out hiking, I’m bringing my camera. I honestly couldn’t imaging not bringing it. My only debate is if I bring additional lenses!

I also always have my monopod in my backpack – it’s actually from the Geekoto tripod but just taking one “leg” keeps the weight down a little.

I use this tripod a TON when working on “fix-it videos” and timelapses and it collapses nicely. I did love the option of bringing just the monopod, but I haven’t used the monopod much from my backpack much since it was such a pain to take out.

So I thought – someone has to have made a walking stick that can double as a monopod, right??

Well, I was in luck! I found the Mountainsmith Trekker FX Light single trekking pole. It has a nice handle on top that screws off and can be used to mount a camera, sweet, right?

I ended up getting two of these poles and then got a 2nd set of regular trekking poles. We’ll mount our small Osmo action camera on one of the poles that Gary carries and the other one goes to me for adding my DSLR. AND we now have trekking poles to aid in both balance and add a little more of an arm workout to our hikes. Bonus all around!

BTW, I don’t leave my DSLR camera on the pole while hiking – it’s a bit too heavy and awkward but we DO leave our Osmo on the pole. Still working out the kinks but so far it seems like a decent setup.

So we were happy to try these out at Fall Creek Falls!

New Hiking Backpack

I have been using the Peak Design clip (V3) for mounting my camera to my backpack. Having a secure mount is essential since hiking trails may require you to scramble up some rocks, or I may need to hold on to a tree if the terrain is severely sloped. Neck straps are a killer for your neck and swing wildly around. And I’d never use it if I put it in my backpack. So this clip has been great.

Over the past several months on longer hikes, my shoulder hurts with the added weight (and especially if I have my larger lens on the camera). I’ve also noticed that after long hikes my left arm actually falls asleep – not so great. I’ve been dealing with that since January and decided to do something about it.

The backpack I have been using is one I purchased at Target and worked relatively well for awhile but since we are absolutely enjoying our time hiking and want to hopefully improve to where we will do maybe 2-3 day treks, I thought let’s get a good backpack.

I was looking for a backpack that would fit me well (I have a short torso) but could also potentially hold a water bladder, sleeping bags & mats as well as other essentials AND camera lenses. I knew if I went hiking, Gary would be along and would likely be carrying the tent. I was also looking for something that had better adjustments and could ideally give some airflow between my and the pack.

You’ll see me wearing this in the next video. So far I’m loving this backpack with the new hiking poles!

Our Camping Locations

If you’re interested in seeing all of the places we’ve stayed in 2022, I’m keeping a (mostly) updated list on Google Maps by Month. Enjoy!