The story of this camping adventure has to start with loading Rosie, our Airstream trailer. We store Rosie in a lot on a nearby military base. It was very hot and that limited our times to mostly the cooler early morning hours. I went to the base one hot afternoon to do the needed maintenance on Rosie before all trips. Since we were leaving in a few days, I turned on Rosie’s refrigerator using the propane option.
Normally, we can feel the temperature inside the refrigerator start to drop when we switch it on. It was too hot inside Rosie and I could not notice if it was working. We decided to take another load of supplies to Rosie the next morning. I was glad to see that the refrigerator was cold and ready to use.
We had one more load to take to Rosie on Sunday morning, the day before we left on another camping adventure. While driving to the military base, Becky asked if I thought we had enough propane gas in Rosie’s tanks. I told her that the spare tank was full and we normally get about two years out of the active tank. Becky asked if I ever changed tanks before and I said multiple times on our first trailer and once on Rosie. She did some quick math in her head and said that we were probably due to run out of propane in the current tank.
That could have been an omen because the refrigerator was 25 degrees warmer than normal when we arrived. Yes, the propane was empty. I switched over to the second tank and relit the refrigerator. While Becky loaded our supplies inside Rosie, I removed the empty propane tank so I could get it refilled before we left the next morning.
Searching for an open place that refills propane tanks on Sunday mornings was a challenge. I was able to find one and returned to Rosie with a full spare tank. I recorded when we changed propane tanks and refilled the spare tank in our Rosie maintenance list and marked on our calendar when to start checking the tanks.
The propane crisis was over and we were ready to leave the next morning on another Rosie adventure.
We normally use multiple navigation devices when we travel. It was curious how our Garmin RV GPS, Apple and Google Maps differed on arrival times. The estimated arrival times were an hour apart as we approached the park. Maybe one of the units was confused as to where we were going.
We stopped on the way at Noccalula Falls in Gadsden, Alabama. It rained a few days earlier and we hoped that the water going over the falls would be more impressive than out last visit there when the water level was a trickle. The view was worth getting off the Interstate to see.
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| Noccalula Falls near Gadsden, Ala |
The first order of business when arriving at a campground is to check in at the office. We could not find the office and went directly to our campsite. Our campsite neighbors told us they arrived the day before us and couldn’t find an office either. We did notice a tag on the site's number post that had our name on it and the dates of our visit. It appeared that we were already checked in.
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| Our site in Fall Creel Falls State Park |
Our site was far from level. It was a pull-through and had an incline steep enough that Rosie bottomed out going in. Looking at the scar marks in the road and our campsite, Rosie wasn’t the first trailer to bottom out there. We were able to use our leveling tools to get close enough to a comfortable “level.” We were glad we were able to park Rosie.
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| Rosie in Fall Creek Falls State Park |
Fall Creek Falls is a nostalgic park to us. We tent camped there several times while our children were small. The park has several hikes labeled as “strenuous.” We decided that we would avoid those this time, but we knew we did all the trails when our children were with us.
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| The Falls |
Speaking of children, we were amazed at the number of families with small children camping at Fall Creek Falls. It was great to see young families enjoying their camping experiences in state parks.
We enjoyed watching the fireflies during the evening. They made our evening walks more interesting.
We had to go into town for an errand while camping at Fall Creek Falls State Park. Our GPS navigation systems all agreed that the shortest route was traveling over a mountain. We consider that route to be a GPS fail. That was a very slow road with too many twists and turns. We asked a letter carrier if she knew a better route back to the campground. She gave us great directions that went around the mountain. We had looked at the route the GPS thought was the best way to our next campground. It included going over another mountain. We found an alternative route that was about 45 minutes longer, but went around the mountains. We elected to follow our own path and to ignore our GPS systems.
We were concerned about leaving our site. We could not back out of the site because we bottomed out pulling in. We had to go forward, but there were several deep rain erosion ruts going that direction. The solution was to cross over to our neighbor's site and use their exit. That idea became more feasible when the neighbors left the day before. The plan worked and we were able to exit the site without problems.
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| Riding our bikes in this park |
We enjoyed riding our bikes, hiking to the falls and the many sights at this campground.
Here are some specifics about this campground:
- There were multiple loops in the campground. They were separated from each others by separate entrances from the main park road
- Our site was a pull-through
- Our site had shade
- Most sites in this campground had some space on both sides. Our site was in the “D” loop
- Our site was paved with dirt and gravel and we needed to use leveling tools to lift one side of Rosie more than five inches correct a side-to-side lean. We also needed to lift the front end of Rosie more than I’ve ever seen by extending the front jack to correct a strong front-to-back lean in Rosie. We will avoid this loop and sit (D-191) when we return to this park
- Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service
- Our site had a water connection
- Our site had a sewer connection
- There were trash cans throughout the camping loops
- There was a bathhouse in all of the camping loops. The one near Rosie was clean and maintained
- The park provided WiFi service. We averaged 4.78 mb download speed
- AT&T provided 2 bars of 5G voice and data service over our campsite
- We were able to watch only PBS using Rosie’s TV antenna. Digital channels seen were only the ones from PBS
- There were restaurants and shopping about 30 minutes away
- This was a pet friendly park
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| Rosie seen from the main road |
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| Scouting the other ridge |
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| More falls |
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| Becky by the falls |
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| Becky and Suzy on the swinging bridge |
