Mountain Trip - Day 1

A few months ago, our old friends that live in New Bern, NC invited us to rent a cabin with them and another family near Boone, NC.  They had done this last year and wanted to do it again and since it's midway between us all, we enthusiastically agreed!

Our plan was to rent the cabin from Thursday to Sunday, go to Tweetsie Railroad on Friday and Grandfather Mountain on Saturday.

Brian and I have really wanted to try camping with the kids now that Rylan is a little older.  So we decided it would be fun (or crazy!) to drive toward the mountains after work on Wednesday and camp for a night before heading on to the cabin.

Over the last couple of months we have been collecting gear in anticipation of camping.  We bought a 4-person tent (we only had a 2-person backpacking tent) and sleeping bags and pads for the boys.  Our tent is a Marmot Limelight, the kids' sleeping bags are Deuter Little Stars, and they got Therm-a-rest BaseCamps.

We decided to try out Edgar Evins State Park.  It's just off of I-40 and about 1 1/2 hours from our house.  We went ahead and reserved a site online before going and picked out one of the primitive sites.  The main sites are on platforms on the hillside, and looked really neat, but we weren't sure how to secure the tent to them (they seemed more suited to RVs).  After seeing the platforms in person though, we will definitely try them out next time.

This is the entrance down to the primitive sites.  There are 9 primitive sites and one other one was occupied during our stay.

You have to walk down these steps ...

and down this steep path to the campsites.

Here is ours - primitive site #5.  Center Hill Lake is just behind the site, down a very steep hill.

We quickly set up our tent because there was rain in the area and we wanted to get everything set up before any rain did come in and before it got dark.

We weren't thrilled about any possible rain because of how the tent pad was situated in the hill.  We were a little worried that if we got heavy rain, we'd have a little river under our tent.  Plus the pad wasn't all that flat.  But, amazingly, we lucked out and had no rain the entire night!

Look at this spacious tent!  I'm so used to our little backpacking tent that this tent seems ridiculous!  It would be snug with 4 adults but 2 adults and 2 kids makes it feel huge.  Brian and I slept on the sides and put the boys in the middle.

After getting the tent set up, we ate dinner.  To make our inaugural family camping trip easier, I premade all our food so we didn't have to cook.  I know my limits :)

After dinner we could either try to get a fire going or explore the park a little.  We opted for exploration.  The fire ring was really close to the tent and the area had gotten over a half inch of rain earlier in the day so all the wood was pretty soggy.

So we drove over to the dam that creates Center Hill Lake.

Our campsite is to the right of the marina across the lake in this picture.

The Caney Fork downstream of the dam was starting to fog up as we were leaving.  I believe the river is a popular place to canoe (it is really gorgeous as you cross over it several times on I-40 with cliffs down to the river).

After our little excursion we headed back to the campground.  We stopped at one of the bathhouses and then headed to the tent.  It was really warm and humid with all the tree cover and recent rain so we left the upper half of both rainfly doors open all night.  But it was still really warm when we were going to bed and both boys requested to strip down to their diapers.

We tried to follow our normal bedtime routine - read 3 books, sing some songs, and then say goodnight.  Rylan pretty much was on top of me and Carter snuggled a little on Brian.  Rylan passed out pretty quickly (15 minutes at the most) and Carter was less than 10 minutes behind.  I think Brian and I dozed a bit then but after a few hours we were both up for a few hours for some reason.  We listened to all the animals and heard a raccoon throw the top off a trashcan by our car.  In the morning we found the lid learning up on my bumper and the food the boys didn't finish the night before consumed.  The boys thought it was hilarious that a raccoon ate Rylan's peanut butter sandwich.

The boys slept though.  But Rylan was everywhere.  I eventually got him off me but he ended up laying perpendicular to the rest of us.  And at some point he was using Carter as a pillow (I had to move him that time).  Carter woke up cold during the night and Brian got his pajamas back on and got him in his sleeping bag.  I knew Rylan had to be cold so I finally got him close enough to me and used my sleeping bag as a blanket for the two of us.  It wasn't a perfect night, but Brian and I got enough sleep and the boys got plenty.  And it didn't rain.  We both felt it was extremely successful!