Tanasi

Amy and I decided to go camping at Tanasi last weekend. We spent most of the day Saturday driving around doing the tourist thing. We checked out the overlook and civil war historic site at the Chilhowee Recreation Area. We watched some boaters playing around in the Ocoee River. Then we drove down a long forest service road to our campsite.

We wanted to stay at the Thunder Rock Campground since you can ride your bicycle from your campsite to the trails. Unfortunately the campground was closed while the TVA makes repairs to the power lines.

Instead we stayed at the Tumbling Creek campground which was nice. There are probably 10 campsites there. Each campsite offers a picnic table, a fire ring, a lantern post, and access to a vault toilet. Here is a picture from our picnic table.



Sunday we headed to the Ocoee Whitewater Center. The center is beautiful. I think anyone that lives anywhere near this place should drive over and check it out. You can sit on the back porch and watch the boaters play in the water.



Or you can walk around on some of the concrete paths and get a closer look at the river.



Amy and I rode our bikes along Old Copper Road. This trail is relatively flat and wide, and it runs a long the river for almost it's entire length. We found some rocks and roots to play with on our ride.



After we rode together, I did a solo ride called Thunder Rock Express in the Parham Eastern Tennessee book. This may be my new favorite ride. Lots of tight fast single track descents. There was definitely some climbing involved, but it felt like you got back twice as much as you put in.