Victoria Bryant State Park....what a gem

There’s nothing quite like August camping in Georgia. For that matter, there’s nothing
quite like doing anything outdoors during the month of August in Georgia. It’s either hot, hotter or sizzling. We had originally planned our August
excursion to be at a place called Devil’s Fort (does that really sound like a good idea?) in S.C. but due to the death of a good friend of mine, we cancelled our plans there and found a campground closer to the Lawrenceville area to allow me to attend his memorial service,
which was set for the Friday of our trip. We found a complete gem of a little campground
at Victoria Bryant State Park in Royston Georgia, just about 30 minutes outside
of Athens. Temp-wise, it still felt as if we were visiting something owned and operated by the Satanl, but really it’s just another outstanding little Georgia State Park.
As per usual for most Georgia parks, the campsites were water and electric only (no
sewer or cable hook-ups) but they were safely the largest, nicest campsites of
any campground we’ve been to yet (public or private). All the sites were graded, level and covered with tons of pea gravel.

First morning with pancakes and sausage….yummy.
The campground has two loops but only one was open during our visit. Our loop was
like a little cul-de-sac with an open area in the middle that housed a large
picnic pavilion, a huge sand volley ball court and a large fire pit. It would
be a great place to go with a group of friends and kids because you can keep an
eye on them anywhere in the cul-de-sac from any campsite plus the traffic circle is perfect for kids to ride their bikes around time and time again.
Just a few yards from the cul-de-sac sat the small but clean bath house.
It definitely could use some updating but it really wasn’t all that bad
considering some of the ones we’ve seen! Conveniently, it also has a small
laundry area as well as a shower/bath area designated for handicapped
individuals. Thankfully, the camp host took a liking to us (we called him “the
hostess with the mostest”) and allowed us to use that facility with the kids
since no one else needed it. Having extra space definitely makes it easier to
try to clean a tired, curious, wriggling two year old.
The really cool part of the park was the trail down to
the river that ran through it. As short walk through the woods (or brief
drive) brought you to a great, beautiful river with tons of rocks and bridges
to climb on and explore. Joshua had his
first ever experience of sliding down river rocks. He was a little scared (“Are
you SURE I can do this, Minya?”) but he loved it. And nothing beats the heat
better than good cold river water. Not far from the prettiest and most easily
accessible part of the river was a really great little playground that had all
sorts of great equipment on it. And just up the road from that was a swimming
pool. It is rare to find pools at Georgia State Parks and frequently when you
find the park has one, it is often closed due to budget restraints. But this
pool was open on Saturday and Sundays. We didn’t visit it since we spent so
much time in the river but it’s good to know it’s there for our next trip back
there.
Nana and Grandpa came to spend the
afternoon and evening with us on Saturday, we went on a hike and saw deer,
walked down to the river and played on the rocks, and cooked out steaks and baked
potatoes on the grill. It was a great
trip and we will definitely visit this campground again soon….hopefully our next trip will be in a 23ss Rockwood Roo
travel trailer…..the purchase is in the works.

Amicalola Falls, Spring 2011

Amicalola Falls Spring 2011

 

Living in the pop-up for a week at Disney affected us in two ways: (1) we were happy
to pack up the pop-up for the winter without even considering another camping
trip before the end of the year and (2) we started fantasizing about buying a
travel trailer. When we bought the pop-up everyone kept telling us that
camping/rv’ing is like a progressive disease: you start out small with your
little pop-up and before you know it you own a motor coach that costs more than
your house! One RV salesman even told us
a story of a 65 year-old female customer of his who came on his lot looking for
a pop-up camper. She looked at several models and then told him that she’d
heard that once you buy a pop-up you quickly decide you want a travel trailer
and then move to a 5^th wheel and onto a motor home. He agreed that
he had witnessed that very thing happen with a number of customers. She told
him they better go ahead and start looking at the motor coaches because at her
age she didn’t really have enough time to go through the whole process. Sure
enough, she drove off in a fancy motor coach that afternoon. So, while we took the fall and winter off to
let the weather warm up and recover from Disney, we started looking into the wonderful
opportunities available in the world of travel trailers. We will post more on
that at a later time.
When
spring arrived we decided to dust off the pop-up and head to the mountains
again. We chose Amicalola State Park. What a beautiful place that is! It’s an easy drive just over an hour north of
Atlanta. We went on Mother’s Day weekend and were quite surprised at the number
of other mothers who chose to spend their special day camping with their families.
The campground itself was quite small with only 24 campsites but each site was
plenty spacious with the standard picnic table and fire ring. When we arrived
only a couple of sites were taken so we had our pick. We chose a lovely shaded
spot that was a quick walk to a large open field where the kids could play and
a brief walk to the bath house. And speaking of the bath house, it was well….not
a place where you wanted to spend a lot of time. (In fact, it added fuel to the
fire of why we wanted a travel trailer.)
As
per our usual routine, I set up camp while Dawn did her best to keep the kids
occupied and out from under foot. This time she made productive use of her time
and took Maggie and the kids on a walk around the campground looking for
kindling for our campfire. By the time they got back, the pop-up was popped-up
and we were ready for our weekend of camping!
Most Georgia State Park campgrounds have some not-terribly-interesting playgrounds
mixed in and around the campsites, but Amicalola was different. There was no
playground on the campground itself, but they had a mac-daddy playground at the
base of the mountain where the visitors center was located. So, while we had to
drive (or take one heck of a walk, which we did) to get there, once there the
kids were happy as clams.
The
weather was quite cool that trip and we got to truly enjoy our campfire that
night before retiring to our toasty little camper. Next morning after some good
hot cheese grits to warm our bellies (not to mention hot coffee) we headed out
on our hiking adventure. We walked the short distance from the campground to
the trail head, which comes in at the top of Amicalola falls. In order to see
the falls, we had to walk down over 700 metal-grated stairs to reach the trail
and overlook. Unfortunately, Maggie had no interest in putting her paws on
those grates which meant that one of us had to carry Maggie while the other
carried Reagan in the backpack. Joshua, being the big-boy hiker that he is,
walked the entire way without complaint. Once down there, for reasons I still
ponder, we decided to take the trail all the way to the bottom of the mountain
and back up. That was one long, long hike, but quite interesting. Understanding that we are on a trail in the
middle of the woods, we were a bit surprised when we found an old rusted truck
wedged between some trees. I have no idea how on earth it got there, but I’m
confident I wouldn’t have wanted to have been in it when it made the trip. We were both reminded of the Weasley’s car in
Harry Potter when it chose to live in the woods rather than be driven anymore
by Ron.
When we finally made it
to the visitor’s center, we were able to rest awhile, rehydrate and eat some fruit
we had packed for our trip. The kids played for a while on the playgrounds and
then we headed back up the mountain. Rather than go back the way we came and
face the 700 plus steps going up, we chose to take the mountain trail all the
way back. There were some beautiful vistas along the way, but we were both so
out of breath we could barely comment on them. Joshua is a big-boy hiker, but
he’s not super boy (don’t tell him that) and we spent a great deal of the trip
up the mountain carrying him on our backs. Reagan, of course, enjoyed the trip
from the comfort of her backpack so we would switch out carrying them when one
of us would get too tired. Poor little
Maggie with her 6-inch long legs made it the whole way back on her own. Of
course, she snoozed the rest of the day once we made it back to the
camper.
By the second day, more campers had
arrived and we found ourselves next to this great little family from Gwinnett.
They had two little boys, the oldest of which was about same age as Josh and
the two became almost instant best friends.
Reagan kept calling the younger boy, who was older than she, “baby.” I
don’t think he appreciated it very much.
The four if then spent hours playing in the big open field behind our campsites. It’s always fun to meet great people on camping trips.
The next morning we had breakfast at the lodge and it was quite yummy, Joshua and I really enjoyed the do it yourself waffle maker. You can’t beat the price for a nice big breakfast to start your day. We will do that again when we return. We spent our last day hiking the rest of the trails. Johua wanted to know if this was a bear cave for a little bear…..We will hopefully be able to make mothers day camping a tradition. The weather was perfect, and you don’t have the crowds to deal with that can be there in the summer months. Beautiful park with nice, intimate campground, gorgeous water falls. We hope to return in the fall.

Unicoi State Park…..here we come.

Having enjoyed Fort Mountain so much, we were looking forward to
our next adventure at Unicoi State Park near Helen, Georgia. We had heard many
good things about Unicoi and had pretty high expectations of the place.
Unfortunately, as is often the case with high expectations, Unicoi did not exactly live
up to them, but was fun none the less.
When we arrived, the campground was pretty packed so we wound up
getting stuck at a campsite at the entrance to one of the campground loops,
which meant we experienced a lot more traffic there than if we had been farther
in. More traffic means more panic attacks when cars come and you don’t have
your eyes directly on the little ones. If I heard “where are the
kids?” once, I heard it a thousand times during that trip. The campsites
in our loop were not very private and we had a clear view of 8-10 other campers
from our spot. And what interesting campers they were! Across from us was a
middle-aged couple that traveled all over the place on a Honda Goldwing
motorcycle with a little trailer hitched to it that contained all their camping
equipment. They exuded the serenity of people who have not a care in the world.
Next to them was a sweet young couple taking their first trip away from their
first baby who was about a year old. They wound up cutting their vacation a
little short due to the antics of the people camping directly across from them
(and two sites down from us). Those folks, another middle aged couple, camped
in a van (no tent, no camper, just the van) and spent their day sitting in lawn
chairs doing absolutely nothing. They weren’t loud or obnoxious, in fact, I
never saw them engage with anyone other than each other and they barely did
that. So, why would they disturb the sweet young couple across from them? Well,
it seems that in the world of the van-people, clothing was optional.
Apparently, when they awoke in the morning they strutted around in the buff
completely unconcerned that others might be watching. Thankfully, we never saw
it as the young couple described it as being enough to cause retinal scarring -
apparently some folks should really keep their clothes on!
Our second day there we headed out to hike at near by Ruby Falls, it was a beautiful hike. The water fall at the top was gorgeous. Maggie made a friend along the way….Saw this really neat tree that grew directly out of a boulder….As with each of our camping adventures, we learned something on
this trip. It turns out that if you take our youngest child on a camping trip,
she will get sick. She doesn’t get sick before we go, or even after we get
there. She literally starts showing symptoms either as we are packing the stuff
in the car or as we are driving to our destination. It’s like magic. In my last
blog, I didn’t mention that after arriving at Enota, Reagan spiked a fever and
spent much of our trip clinging to one of us because she didn’t feel well. At
Fort Mountain, same thing to a lesser extent. She remained true to form at
Unicoi only this time she got really sick. Her little cough went from
occasional to constant and her respirations increased to the point where we
realized we had to do something. So, on the morning of day two after an almost
sleepless night, I packed her up and headed back to Atlanta to one of the
Children’s Healthcare Clinics to have her seen. We spent a couple of hours
there as they gave her breathing treatments to open up her bronchial passages.
Poor baby girl! Although still a happy one… We then dropped by the pharmacy to fill her prescriptions and
headed back to the campground.
On Saturday some friends of ours and their little boy joined us at
our campsite. These folks actually know how to camp and are not nearly the
princesses that Dawn and I can be. They sleep in a two-person tent and can fit
all their camping supplies in a zip-lock bag. Meanwhile Dawn and I fill up our
SUV and the pop-up with all our crap for a three-day trip. They put us to
shame. But what we didn’t realize about these guys is that, more often than
not, they bring horrific weather with them wherever they camp. True to form,
that night the skies opened and a torrential downpour hit the campground. Being
new to the camper world, we did not realize what happens when you put hundreds
of gallons of water on top of an aluminum-framed awning – it will collapse.
Unfortunately, our hard-core camping friends had put their tent up under the
awning to help stay dry but that did not work out so well. About 5am when it finally collapsed it did so on their heads, literally. One of the
girls had a gash in her head from the awning frame and all three of them were
soaked to the bone. What a mess. We discovered that packing up a wet pop-up
camper is not, I repeat, not fun. So, another camping adventure comes to an end….a very wet end. Next time maybe we’ll pay more attention to the forecast.

Our camping journeys begin....

One Saturday morning last June, I was taking full advantage of the opportunity to sleep in that resulted from the kids spending the weekend with their grandparents when my partner rudely awakens me to the pronouncement: “we are buying a pop-up camper!” My first response was “no, we’re not”, my second was “what’s a pop-up camper”, and my third was “where’s my coffee!” I should have known then that I wouldn’t win the battle over the pop-up purchase, but I gave it my best shot for a couple of days. My best argument against buying one was compelling: it had been twenty years since either of us had camped and we had no idea whether we would like it or not. It seemed imprudent to go spend thousands of dollars for something that we may use only once. So, off we went to purchase camping equipment in preparation for a tent-camping trip to test the waters. We bought a tent the size of a small conference room along with all manner of other fun and interesting camping items. I have no idea why we thought we needed a gargantuan tent; we aren’t very big people and there are only four of us, but honestly we could have slept a small army in that thing! Since we already owned an inflatable mattress we thankfully didn’t waste another hundred dollars for one of those, because by the time we got out act together and figured out where we wanted to camp, we were the proud owners of a brand-new pop-up. Our arena-sized tent only saw action in our yard!
I recognize that it sounds as if, suddenly and without warning, a new pop-up appeared in our driveway without any involvement on our part and that certainly wasn’t the case. But I have to say that once we began looking at campers we were sort of drawn into this camper-shopping vortex that just wouldn’t let us loose. After a while of looking at hundreds of photos of pop-ups on scads of websites we simply had no choice but to buy one. And not the used variety we initially agreed on; oh,no we had to buy a brand new one. After all, we didn’t want to sleep on someone elses bed, right?
So, armed with our new pop-up we set off on our first family camping trip. I must say, there was quite the learning curve at the beginning and it had much less to do with understanding the intricacies of camping and much more to do with selecting the campground. My partner, who has perhaps some obsessive-compulsive tendencies when it concerns investigating new things (not a bad trait, I must say) searched for days for the perfect campground to go to on our first trip. We wanted someplace in the mountains that would be fairly easy to get to since neither of us had ever towed anything in our lives. Since we had two kids under the age of 4 we needed a kid-friendly place, preferably something with a river or stream and not too terribly far away from home lest something happen while we’re gone. Finally, after days of searching on the web and making telephone calls, Dawn found the perfect place – or so we thought. It’s a place called Enota Mountain Retreat and it’s located near Hiawassee in the North Georgia mountains. D read every review that could be found on the place and while there were a few negatives the overwhelming majority were glowing reports raving about the organic gardens and small farm on the property. (Having now experienced the place in person and been able to compare those reviews with reality we’ve figured out that owners of places that advertise on the internet (not to mentioned their employees, their friends and relations) can write reviews pretending to be customers when in reality they aren’t. I’m not saying that happened at Enota, but, well, let’s just say we couldn’t figure out how anyone who stayed there could possibly come away wanting to write a glowing review.)
Upon arrival, we had this sense that maybe someone was playing a trick on us. Another visitor noted that it felt like a scene from one of the “Family Vacation” movies when they drive into the run-down closed theme park. Our virginal camping ideas were that we would have this beautiful, private camping spot where we would only be able to see our neighbors if we went looking for them. Our visions did not include setting up our pop-up in the middle of a field next to a dirt road with virtually no shade and absolutely no privacy. Seriously. There was a stream. There was a farm. There were animals. It was, in a way, kid-friendly. But it was not at all like what we expected or wanted. I’m not exaggerating by saying the camping area was a field without shade or any form of natural separations between the sites. I can’t count the number of times I retrieved both my Scottie and my 1 year old daughter from the neighboring campsites. While that may make me sound like a bad parent, actually they merely wandered a matter of a few feet before they were technically in the other campsite. Having now camped a number of times we can safely say that was one of the worst set-ups we’ve ever experienced in terms of privacy and shade.
On top of that the dirt road that accessed the campground was about 10 feet from our pop-up. Between the staff and other campers trying to get to their sites, there was a constant flow of traffic kicking up plumes of dust to cover our site. The site itself was not large enough to hold our pop-up and our mid-sized SUV so we had to park our vehicle across the dirt road – in the mud. To add a bit of insult to injury we also discovered that since it’s all organic up there, they did nothing to contend with the overwhelming number of flies that infiltrated the campground. We had flies everywhere – in the camper, in the car, in our luggage, in our food – everywhere.
We checked out the organic garden and were not particularly impressed. Having grown up on a small farm myself, I was surprised at the weed-filled rows of very dirty vegetables. It just didn’t seem that much care was given to the garden and land. The farm animals were sweet but could have used some TLC. And, for God’s sake could they get some of the flies off of them?
We returned from our venture to the garden and farm to let the kids play at the playground. What a mess that area was! There were countless ways a kid could get hurt on each item of equipment. The in-ground trampolines, which were a good idea, were in horrible shape with springs missing everywhere. The playground equipment was in terrible shape and needed repairing or replacing altogether.
Feeling that perhaps we were being camping prima donnas having never really camped like this before, we began asking others around us how they were enjoying their experience. The loudest complaints came from those with travel trailers or rv’s who were unable to open either slides or awnings because of the tight spaces. Others were just as off-put by the dusty field of camping as we were. Some actually seemed to enjoy themselves, though for the life of me I can’t figure out why. About noon on day two of our three-day adventure, we threw in the towel and gave up the campsite to the flies. And when I say flies I mean you can start counting them and get to 100 without having to move. We just couldn’t take it anymore. We asked the management if we could possibly get some of our money back but all they offered was to give us a credit towards our next visit; like that was ever gonna happen! I do think the kids had fun and we made the best of it…..
You might wonder what on earth would make us ever go back on another camping adventure again and frankly I wondered that myself for a minute. But, it didn’t take long for us to figure out that in a different setting camping would really be a blast. So, off we went in search of our next campground and thus began our love affair with Georgia State Parks. Our first State Park experience was at Fort Mountain and my God what a beautiful place that is. The campground is very wooded and most sites are quite private. We were lucky enough to get an extremely private site on the top of a small hill in the campground. We were a short bike ride or walk to the bath house as well as the lake. When we went the temperature up there was close to 100 degrees so the public swimming area of the lake attracted a ton of locals as well as campers. It was so hot we actually went swimming with about 150 of our closest friends – at least they were after that experience. We learned to truly appreciate the fact that the camper had AC. We are not even close to hard-core campers and don’t function well without modern conveniences like heat and air. We loved cooking out on our grill and the food was so good. We went hiking up to the top of the mountain, which was absolutely spectacular. Learning about the wall and its history/mystery was interesting as well. All-in-all despite the heat, the Fort Mountain camping trip restored our faith that we really could and would enjoy camping. Our son got to experience and enjoy his first real campfire and marshmallow roast.
Not all was roses at Fort Mountain. The bath house was a little scary. Spiders and critters occupied most corners and the whole thing needed a facelift. We had our first experience seeing a school bus modified into some form of an rv – quite interesting and entertaining. We also had a couple of ‘Deliverance’ moments where we were fairly certain there were banjos playing somewhere in the background and bad stuff seemed imminent. Not surprisingly, the occupants of the modified school bus played a role in a couple of those moments. They also brought their own mid-sized freezer that they towed behind them. To each his own, I suppose.
All-in-all, the Fort Mountain experience restored our faith in our earlier belief that we would truly love camping. For me, personally, I discovered that my soul seemed rejuvenated by being back in nature. Not by being in a manicured city park but out in the wild with all manner of creatures, plants and trees. For whatever reason, it’s the only vacation where I truly feel that I get away from it all and can decompress. We also learned that many, if not most, campers are really good souls – folks who care about nature and making the world a little bit better place. Our final lesson from Fort Mountain was that food cooked and eaten under the stars tastes much better than that cooked inside. Once home, our then 3-year-old kept asking when we were going to go camping again. I think he enjoyed himself as much as we did.