Side trips are the best and spending time with my daughter and wife are the tops. We decided to take a few days to visit a campground to see if my daughter liked to go camping or not. Now to me, camping isn't in a camp-resort where there is a store and pool but we had to start somewhere and it was a selling point to the eleven year old.
Yogi in the Smokies campground is a Jellystone Park that is a chain across the US. Over all, we had a great time. They had many programs going on for the kids. Mountain of bubbles, movies, arts and crafts, "Hey, Hey" rides and much more. This campground was much bigger than anticipated with lots of campers but it wasn't too crowded. The Raven Fork river ran down the side of the campground and many people were tubing down the river. We didn't try it this time but it looked fun.
We took a 4 mile hike to a place called Mingo Falls. Now I have never heard of them before and the walk to them was pretty tame until you started going up the stair trail, straight up! These falls are mostly hidden but are fascinating. The water comes down mostly on one side but the rest of the rock face looks like there are thousands of strings/tassels hanging down but is really small water streams. The photos don't do them any justice but it is worth the hike to see for yourself.
The weather was great, didn't rain until the night before we were leaving and we never had to feel overheated. The most important part is my daughter has already asked when we can go camping again so this side trip was a total success.
