Tennessee State Parks

We are absolutely loving Tennessee State Parks!  There are so many of them and they all look amazing.  We stayed at 3 of them so far.  I already blogged about the first one in another post: Reelfoot Lake State Park.

The next two that we stayed at are Henry Horton State Park:

and Cumberland Mountain State Park:

They were all wonderful, but Cumberland Mountain was my favorite.  It was especially beautiful because of the fall colors.  After living in Florida for 14 years we are not used to seeing these kinds of fall colors.  It was awesome!

We realized we love staying at state parks so much more than RV parks.  They are more woodsy and secluded, the sites tend to be bigger and more spread out, and they have more of a campground feel.  Don’t get me wrong, we still enjoy RV parks, but lately state parks are more to our liking.

Jesse and I had quite an adventure at Henry Horton State Park.  Jesse has been doing Couch to 5K with me because I’m training for the Disney Princess 5K in February.  Jesse loves to run so he is joining me as I do this.  There was a nice nature trail that we could access just behind our campsite.  Somehow we ended up getting lost in the woods.  At one point the trail wasn’t well-marked and we suddenly realized we were not even on a trail anymore.  We found we were walking in circles because we kept ending up back at the same spot.  Chris called me wondering where we were because it was going to be getting dark soon.  I told him I think we’re lost, so he and Jake came looking for us.  They came across a park ranger on a horse and told him they were looking for us.  He said that he had recently seen us and knows about where we are.  He came along about 10 minutes later and helped us find our way back.  I guess you could say we were rescued by the Lone Ranger.  🙂

Our friends, the Graham family met us at Henry Horton.  Their girls joined the boys on the maze at the park.

Also while we were at Henry Horton we did some sightseeing in Nashville with the Grahams.  We visited the Grand Ole Opry.

And Cooter’s Dukes of Hazard Museum:

Cumberland Mountain State Park was lots of fun.  They have 3 playgrounds which the boys loved!

Cumberland Mountain is known for this beautiful bridge.

The other side of the bridge.

And they have beautiful nature trails.

This was a suspension bridge.  It was fun to walk across it.

Another place we visited while at Cumberland Mountain was the Crossville Model Railroad Club.  This reminded the boys of their Grampa who loves to take them to see model train sets like this.  Going here made them really miss Grampa.  They are very excited to see him and Gramma in just a few weeks.

One thing I loved about this park is there was no WiFi.  I know, that might sound crazy because everyone loves to have their free WiFi.  Chris and I use our Verizon data plan for work, but when an RV park has free WiFi the boys like to play on a Minecraft server and watch Stampy videos.  If you don’t know who Stampy is, consider yourself lucky.  🙂  Just kidding, my kids love watching him and have learned lots of cool things to do on Minecraft by watching his videos.  Anyway, when we don’t have WiFi they tend to go outside and play more often.  At Cumberland Mountain they rode their bikes a lot more than usual.  Also, the picture below shows them in the woods behind our campsite.  They spent most of the week back there making their own nature trail.  They were so imaginative and creative and they spent hours back there clearing leaves and making a trail.  They used walkie talkies so I could keep in touch with them and make sure they didn’t get lost.  It reminded me of when I was a kid and how I used to go out and ride my bike and play in the woods for hours.  Kids really need more time to be able to do these kinds of things.  They need more time to just be kids.

Kitty also really loves camping in the Tennessee State Parks.  So much to see and explore.  Jake was teasing her with this branch on the picnic table.

Another place we visited was Ozone Falls which was beautiful!

We also celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary last week.  We had a date night with Katie and Keith.  We have really enjoyed spending time with them for the past 2 months.  One of the hardest parts of this lifestyle is saying goodbye to people so often, but when we said goodbye to the Grahams it was only for a little while.  We’ll see them again in 2 weeks.  Until then, safe travels!