Crabtree Falls
Before we had children, I had done very little car camping. For me, camping meant sleeping out beside a fire, along a trail or beside a river, and never very close to a road. My little 3-man Gander Mountain tent was used and abused when needed, but for the most part I enjoyed sleeping under the stars. The Gander Mountain tent was little bigger than a backpacker tent. It worked great for every kind of camping that I did. It worked for Jenelle and I in the first several years of our marriage, but it was starting to show its wear and was needing to be replaced. I had been saving up pocket change in a jar for several years with the intent being to use that money to buy a new tent. When our daughter arrived, it was definitely time for a bigger tent. Somehow, what I had envisioned for a new tent wasn't exactly what we purchased. I was thinking something small and packable. What we ended up with was a big family tent. Thus started our season of car camping. As we added more kids to our family it didn't take long to discover that car camping with kids in campgrounds was definitely a fun family affair.
Jenelle had done a lot of car camping with her family growing up, with lots of fun memories of swimming and hiking around the campground. Our kids followed suit. Over the past 15 years or so, Jenelle and I and the kids have been lots of places. And often we car camped along the way. With the kids getting older, we've been doing more backpacking and canoe trips, with car camping become less frequent. I guess there is a season for everything.
This past week Jenelle and I made a quick trip to Spruce Pine NC, to get a load of batch for our furnace. The little town of Spruce Pine is tucked away in the mountains of North Carolina, not real far from Mt Mitchell which, at 6,684 ft is the highest peak in the east.
Our friends offered to stay with the kids. Since they have several kids the same age as ours, it was a win for all of us. While the kids were making up some play version of The Hunger Games at home and having a ball with their friends, Jenelle and I were getting some alone time with just the two of us.
We decided to camp instead of getting a hotel and randomly picked a campground on the Blue Ridge Parkway called Crabtree Meadows. In the morning we got up early and took a short mile or two hike into what I believe may have been the most beautiful waterfall I've ever seen. Maybe we just got there on the right day, but the water looked crystal clear as it cascaded down the mountain.
I'm not sure what season of life you are in, but if you are in that season of life where the backcountry is just a little out of your comfort zone, but you still love getting out and seeing beautiful parts of creation that not everyone gets to see every day, put Crabtree Falls on your bucket list.
If you don't have a bucket list, it's never to late to start one!
