CALHOUN FALLS STATE PARK, SOUTH CAROLINA AND BEYOND

A lot has happened in the last week, some expected, some unexpected, some happy and some sad.

CALHHOUN FALLS STATE PARK

We arrived five days ago on Saturday to Calhoun Falls State Park. It is a beautiful park, but spoiler alert, there are no water falls and no one could tell me why the town and park were named it. Granted there was only one person working there the whole time we were there so it was a shallow pool.

Before we arrived, we stopped at Matt’s Oak and Hickory BBQ because I wanted Carolina BBQ which I have never had. It was a down-home place as you can see and no tomato-based BBQ sauce was used in the preparation. Sides are rice, not beans or potatoes and biscuits instead of corn bread. I was glad I tried it, but like Waffle House it is one and done and I don’t need to have it again. I prefer the tomato-based sauce, not surprise considering I’m Italian!

When we arrived all the spots were taken and the one, we were assigned to was in the forest and we could not see the lake. It was very lovely as you can see below. Jerry had ridden his bike to the camp store and purchased some wood and we had a fire until about 8:30.

But I like to be near water when ever I can, must be the Scorpio in me. I walked around the park with Ernie and jotted down some space numbers I liked and called the one person we spoke to Cameron, and we were able to move to one on my list the next day through Tuesday when we left. Look how nice it was at our water space. That day I foraged through the forest for down wood and in the afternoon, I made a twig fire in the fire pit. It was called the pre fire, fire since we did buy fire wood for the evening. This was Sunday when the clocks had changed. By 7 pm it was so dark we figured it must have been 9 pm and since we were out of wood we went inside.

Yesterday, Tuesday morning we were making our way back to Tennessee and knew we could not take our planned route since it included US 40 that had been washed out during Hurricane Helene. We had called the park a few days before to be sure we could stay there and the man who answered the phone said we could and told us which roads to take to get there from South Carolina.

SMOKEY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK

The road to take was US 441 which goes through the Smokey Mountain National Park. This was an unexpected happy chance adventure. It did, however, make our original 3 ½ hour trip when I booked in July into a 5-hour drive and with stops to eat, walk Ernie, gas up the RV, stop in the park and go to the grocery it turned into more than 7-hour trip.

First, we stopped in Cherokee and drove through the tribal lands. At the deli we stopped at there were reserved spots for the Tribal Elders. There was a beautiful wooden sculpture and a very nice park. Of course there was a casino.

Cherokee is right at the entrance of the park. When we began driving there were signs about the elk. It is elk rutting season and you could not go on any of the open space grass since the elk were there in large numbers. If you look at the trees, you can see many elk. We then continued to drive through the park stopping where we found spaces and interesting views. We had spent a few days in the park about 6 years ago so we didn’t stop at places we were before.

Exiting the park, we went through Gatlinburg and stopped at the most expensive grocery store! Bread was $5 a loaf. I purchased some non-branded turkey breast cold cuts at $13 a pound. When I left Bloomingdale, Boar’s Head was $10 a pound at Caputo’s. Maybe I am in for a shock when I return? So far, we had not seen any devastation from Hurricane Helene.

When we were about 25 minutes away from the campground, we started to see buckled roads and down trees.

FOX FIRE CAMPGROUND, HARTFORD TN

We had called and knew the campground had suffered some damage but knew where we were staying had not been flooded. There were 50 campsites originally, now there are 14. The sites 1 to 14 and the cabins survived but everything below, except the pavilion is gone. Ernie and I walked the area and it was horrible. There was a damn about ¼ of a mile up the river that did not hold and the flooding was over the top of the pavilion, about 20 feet. There are chunks of the road leading here that are gone, but the road mostly held. It is so sad to see.