Burgess Falls State Park

Last Sunday, I took the boys on a hiking adventure to Burgess Falls State Park, near Sparta Tennessee. I was looking to get them out of the house for a little activity so I looked for a close state park. For some reason I'd never heard of this park, and from the pictures on the website, I was not terribly impressed. But what the heck. So we took the hour and 15 minute drive east on I-40 and then turned off into the land of nowhere. There were very few signs for this place and my GPS told me where it was supposed to be, but it wasn't. So we kept driving. Another few miles down the road we found it (we were about to turn around). Immediately after getting out of the car we could hear the sound of rushing water. Yes, just a few yards from the parking lot. The map I had said the trail was about 1.5 miles long. I was thinking, "easy trail, it's probably even paved..." I'm glad I had my hiking boots on. It was fairly steep and very rocky. and in several places, if we took a few wrong steps, we might have fallen off the bluff and into the falls. There were three main falls and the last was the most impressive. We actually could hike down the cliff to the bottom of the third falls and sit where the spray cooled us off. It was very steep and me, being afraid of heights, was terrified in one part where there is a set of metal stairs with a cage around it that scales the cliff wall. Once at the bottom, it was just large boulders that we climbed over to get to the bottom of the falls. It was truly amazing, the power of the water rushing over the top of the cliff and hitting the bottom. The wind was strong simply from the water coming over the 136 foot drop. after climbing back up the freaky stairs, we found another trail that had some nice views over the back side of the park that looked out over the lower river, past the falls. It was beautiful. I'm so glad that I got to spend time with my boys Even though they didn't want to go hiking originally, they were both asking when we could come back.

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