Ocoee Camping

This was the sunset Saturday night. Beautiful, huh?

This is me enjoying my morning cup of coffee Sunday morning.

Notice the really cool blue percolator on the fire grate.

That's my lovely tent in the photo.

PawPaw took this picture Sunday afternoon as we were leaving. It's the Ocoee River.

They had just opened the dam - supposedly for the last time until after winter - and there were hundreds of kayakers in the water.

This is PawPaw this morning -- sucking in his gut (his words, not mine) for the photo.

The scenery was incredible.

PawPaw and I drove northeast of Chattanooga yesterday and camped on top of a mountain above the Ocoee River. Most of the camping areas were closed for the winter, but the overflow camping area was open -- and there was only one other family camping there. It was dark by the time we got there, and we were concerned that we might have waited too late to get our camp set up. We didn't have time to scope out the area before it was too dark to see. It was remote - and we had to shine the car headlights at the campsite to get things settled. However, we were quite a team in getting everything set up. PawPaw started the fire and helped me set up the tent. By the time the fire was burning well, we were ready to cook our dinner. It turned out to be a wonderful camping trip! During the night there was some ferocious wind -- so much so that PawPaw already had in mind where we would go if it got any worse (a ditch a short distance from our tent). Although the wind blew strongly off and on throughout the night, there was only a little while that it seemed so intense. It rained for about five minutes, and then we woke to a beautiful sunrise. The only significant problem was that the tent held in the heat so well that it was too warm inside. We've decided that the next pretty weekend with COLD weather, we'll make another camping trip.

We saw the most spectacular fall foliage I can remember seeing in years. It was simply breathtaking. I took some photos of the scenery and of our campsite. The photos are above.

This morning we went on a bike ride along the Ocoee River. Not a long bike ride -- just about 2 1/2 miles. It was beautiful.