Cloudland Canyon State Park Campground 2011

So the Four Happy Campers and their Scottie officially became happier campers with the purchase of a new travel trailer! Perhaps no other purchase in the history of the world has been as thoroughly vetted as this one. Although that may be a slight exaggeration, I can say with some confidence that I doubt anyone else researched the various options available to us more thoroughly than Dawn. I’ve previously referenced her slight OCD tendencies and make no mistake she was fully obsessed with the travel trailer purchase. The upside of that is that we now know everything there is to know about almost every travel trailer out there; the down side is that we spent months going round and round and round about what, if anything, to buy. My Dawnie is now an expert on the topic and, in fact, frequently corrected sales people when they were discussing available options on the models they were showing us. I have absolutely no doubt that she worked us the best deal possible on our new Kodiak 284BHS.

The new camper has a little front bedroom for us, two bunk beds in the back for the kids (which they absolutely love), a dinette that converts to a double bed, a jack-knife sofa (which seems like it would be horribly uncomfortable but we haven’t tried it) and, most importantly, a real bathroom with a glassed-in shower! It has a full kitchen inside including a stove, oven, large refrigerator and microwave, as well as an outdoor kitchen with a little stove and small fridge. Because this model didn’t have a grill, we bought a Weber Q portable grill, which honestly may be the best grill I’ve ever owned. It cooks evenly and sears a steak better than anything I’ve ever seen. I absolutely love it and would highly recommend it for anyone looking for a small portable grill.

We were able to take our new camper on our first expedition up to Cloudland Canyon State Park in Rising Fawn, Georgia over the long Labor Day weekend. I, unfortunately, wound up on trial in Gwinnett County during the preceding week and my jury was still out on Thursday morning when we were planning to begin our trip. So, I got up bright and early that morning and hooked up the camper to our truck and Dawn had to haul the camper up to the park. Joshua didn’t realize she was pulling the trailer and asked Dawn on the way up how our “tamper” was going to get to the park. When she told him it was behind them and the truck was pulling it, he decided that we had the best, strongest truck ever.

Cloudland Canyon is aptly named given that you sometimes feel higher than the clouds as you look out over the spectacular vistas from the overlooks scattered throughout the park. The Canyon itself is amazing with sheer rock cliffs edged by beautiful Georgia hardwoods. If you are afraid of heights as we are be forewarned: it’s a long way down from the overlooks and it’s a straight drop. Thankfully, they’ve put up fences to keep you a safe distance from the edge. The campground is divided into two sections: the East Rim and the West Rim. As per usual, we read numerous reviews on the campground prior to arrival and most campers seemed to prefer the West Rim. Dawn headed straight there when she arrived and found a great private site for us. The sites were small, especially compared with the ones at Victoria Bryant, but they seemed well maintained. Ours slanted a bit to one side so I had to run up the wheels on one side of the camper onto some wooden blocks to try to even it out. We’ve since purchased these really cool interlocking blocks that let you raise the camper up to about 4 inches high for those particularly uneven campsites. Those would have come in handy at Cloudland as I didn’t quite get the camper even and we were all walking at a slight angle the whole weekend.

For those considering a camping trip to Cloudland, I’ll explain the main differences between the East Rim and West Rim. The East Rim campsites have very little privacy. It’s a newer campground and the green space between the sites just hasn’t grown in that well. It’s almost like a very nice, large parking lot for campers. The upside of the East Rim is that you are very close to the best views in the park as well as the Interpretive Center which hosts a variety of activities for kids. The West Rim campsites are very secluded and private. You are basically out in the woods, which I like. Our site had a little unmarked trail that led down to the main West Rim trail.

While the park was absolutely beautiful, it really wasn’t well suited for our little family right now. The West Rim trail was pretty strenuous and there were several places with some fairly steep drop offs, which is not really what you want with little ones around. We did find the closest thing to a bear cave that we’ve come across in all our hiking. Joshua always wants to find a bear cave when we hike (thanks to the book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt) and normally if we can find a cool rock grouping or a hollowed out tree we’ll call it a bear cave and pretend to look for bears. This time we found a really cool small cave in one of the rocks. Joshua was both very excited and very concerned that the bear owner of the cave would come back and find us hanging out there. Thankfully, nothing of the sort happened. Reagan is now a whopping 25 pounds, which is a lot to carry on your back especially while trying to negotiate some rocky, steep hills on the hike. We made it about a mile on the trip and turned around for home. For those without small kids, Cloudland Canyon is an amazing place to visit and a must do for hikers.

The only negative about Cloudland that we discovered were the playgrounds. How can you have a playground without a slide? Each campground loop has its own playground and neither of them had a slide. Both had structures for the kids to climb on but it didn’t take long for them to get bored with that. We wound up driving into nearby Trenton, which was about 20 minutes away just to find a decent playground.

Dawn found out that the Interpretive Center was hosting a “Catfish Rodeo” at the small pond located within the park. For a whopping $2 we were loaned a fishing pole, given a big bag of stale hamburger buns and sent over the river and through the woods to the tiny pond. Joshua was SO excited to go “tishing.” When we got to the pond, this extremely nice older man approached me with his hands cupped and extended in front of him. He asked me if I was squeamish and I mistakenly told him not really. He then presented me with a handful of wriggling, disgusting, fat meal worms. I immediately did the grossed-dance (you know the one where you vigorously shake your hands while simultaneously twisting and wriggling your body) and quickly informed him that I had misspoken and I was, in fact, squeamish. Thankfully, he didn’t think I was a complete freak. He laughed at me and brought his handful of grossness over to where we were sitting and proceeded to bait our hook for us. Joshua almost immediately caught a fish. He was SOOO excited! The nice man hung out with us long enough for Joshua to catch 3 more fish (actually, I think it may have been the same fish two other times – it looked awfully familiar). Joshua had a great time fishing, Reagan had a great time getting into all sorts of trouble, and Dawn and I learned that one of us needs to buck up and learn how to bait hooks and remove the caught fish from the hook! We then returned to the interpretive center to return our fishing pole and pick up Joshua’s “First Fish” certificate….so freakin cute!Maggie and Reagan had a great time fishing too….thankfully we have an outdoor shower on our new TT.

We love our new travel trailer and are looking forward to our next adventure!