The campsites there are close together. By "close together," I mean "on top of each other." Our neighbor's tent was about eight feet from our tent. This wasn't a problem 'til we wanted to go to bed.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
We got to the campsite early in the afternoon and set up and were relaxing when a trailer backed up to the site on the other side of our neighbors, and three men and two junior-high-age boys got out and started unloading. We didn't pay them too much attention, as we were reading in the shade of a giant tree, but after a while, Eric looked up and commented, "They're building a city." As more men and boys had arrived, he decided to call this city "Manville." They ended up with about fourteen or so guys spread over two or three campsites in about seven tents. They had coolers full of meat and polished off a #10 can full of baked beans for dinner. It was pretty impressive.
We gained neighbors, and we went swimming, and after we returned from the night swim, I began to be ready to climb in the tent to sleep. So we did, but our neighbors didn't. This wouldn't have been a problem except that they were only a few yards from us, playing poker. Also, being August in Kentucky, it was quite warm out and rather stuffy in the tent. Neither of us could fall asleep. I freaked out for a while and then dozed off, and I woke up a little while later to Eric freaking out. So we decided to go for a drive.
We drove the twenty-five minutes into Corbin, and pretty much everything was closed except for Waffle House, and being fans of Waffle House, we decided that it was a good option. As we pulled into the parking lot, we noticed that it was pretty full for 12:30am, and we walked in to find the place packed. It was noisy and rowdy, and we pretty soon realized that the bars must've closed at midnight, and everyone went right to Waffle House. There were bikers there and sorority-type girls and cuddly couples and even a elementary-aged girl who was dragged there by what I assume were her slightly drunk parents. It was a wild experience.
By the time we got back to our campsite, our neighbors were in bed, meaning that we could do the same. But the next morning we decided that we'd skip the second night at the campground and go home after seeing the falls. We had already gone swimming, got a slight sunburn, and cooked over a campfire twice, and we were planning to go to a park ranger talk that afternoon. Our mini-vacation was complete.
The morals of the story:
1. Don't go camping in the south in the summer.
2. Do a little more research on the size and spacing of campsites before committing to a campground.
The falls were quite impressive since it's been rather rainy the past couple of weeks. Although you can't tell from this picture, the water falls sixty-eight feet. It's the largest waterfall south of Niagra Falls and east of the Rockies.
No comments:
Post a Comment