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Southeast (Gulf Coast), Texas, United States

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Fall Creek Falls SP – A Wrap-up

We spent Wednesday & Thursday in the state park, and left Friday morning to head toward Tellico Plains, TN for the TRVN rally at the KOA campground.

On Wednesday, we opened the door of the Bus and this is what the car looked like after another night of rain.

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We thought it looked kind of funny since it had rained off and on for most of the night.  However, as Patsy walked to the car, she discovered that we had left her window open all night………… it was wet on the passenger side, and damp all over the car!!  She sat on a rug all day, and we ran the heater all day (with the windows open), and by evening, it had pretty much dried out.

We set out to discover the park, since we had only done a quick tour on Tuesday.  We went to another falls in the park, near a “Nature Center”.  We found a swinging bridge that looked like harmless fun, and crossed it.  Here is Patsy on the bridge and a few pictures:

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However, once we crossed the bridge, there were some nice concrete steps and we climbed them…….. and then there were trails with signs that seemed to imply that we would walk up and around the nature center and come out on the other side, so off we went!

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The trail went on and on.  After walking about a 1/4 mile, we came upon a sign that said it was another 3/4 mile to the end!!  We had already invested a lot of effort in up hill walking that we figured the rest had to be downhill…… so we went on.  We did get some sightings of water falls, and we saw some bridges over streams that fed the falls, but it was a long and rainy walk, plus, it was very humid, and the surface was rocky, and with a lot of slippery tree roots from where soil had been eroded away.

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If you look at yesterday’s blog, you will note that it is the same falls where met up with our Lone Star Allegro club friends.  What we had done was not walk around some falls to get to the other side of the nature center, but back to the other set of falls in the park!!!  We were faced with the 1 1/4 trail walk back to where we had parked the car, or a 3 mile walk on the roadways!!!  We were discussing it, when a guy who had heard us offered a ride.  No-brainer, we took it!!!

NO MORE TRAILS!! If I can’t see it from the driver’s seat of the CRV, it ain’t gonna get seen!  Here are more pictures of the park, from the car!!!

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In the area of the preceding three pictures, we found another swinging bridge!  It was a beautiful area, but now I don’t trust swinging bridges…… I associate them with a bad experience!

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Once on the bridge, Patsy tried to get me to go across…. I did, but only to the end of the bridge!  We also saw some wildlife….. a lot of deer and one lonely beaver!

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We took a quick drive into the nearby town of Pikesville, TN, and got these pictures, including the rock with paint that looked like toes!!! 

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Here are some more pictures including one with the famous “smoke” in it!

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A lot of pictures were taken on Thursday.  We got up Friday, with it still raining, and left the park.

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