This past weekend Casey and I went camping and it was a total last minute decision. We had to buy a tent, some tie outs for the dogs (because yes, they all three went with us) and find an open campsite. It just so happened that this weekend (Monday) was the Solar Eclipse, and since this area was in the path of totality, campsites have been booked for months. We were able to find a spot that was a little out of the path on Barren River Lake, so we booked it, packed up and headed out.
I'm not sure if you've ever looked for a place to camp, but it isn't that easy. I mean there are always places where you can just drive up and see if they have a space, and there are always the places you already know about that are probably pretty close. But we don't have places that we always go to yet, and campsite websites are terrible. For the most part, you'll only see their availability (if that) and you can forget about seeing any pictures of the area. We knew that we wanted to be in the trees and I was interested in being on a lake. We definitely didn't want to be in a parking lot type campsite and we didn't want to be hiking far to a campsite on our first trip with three dogs. Enter in Bailey's Point!
We were delighted to find out that our campsite was right next to an entrance to the lake. We were basically on the water, just higher up on the hill. The whole campground is right on the lake, so there were three specific areas you could go to swim. We were in the F loop and it's lake area was the best for us. It was secluded and a couple of moments we were the only people down there. But even with other people at the lake, we were able to spread out and it was calm and relaxing.
We brought our $5 Walmart floats and floated while watching the sunset.
We also brought loads of our favorite Topo Chico.
Man oh man did we have an experience with cooking over a fire! Neither of us have ever done this before and we really learned a lot because we cooked three meals. The first meal we cooked was our first night's dinner, and it got so dark while we were in the middle of cooking. We were very close to having our food all cooked and the fire went out almost completely. We ended up just wrapping everything up in foil and tossing it on the hot coals to finish the cooking process. I have since watched many videos on how to do this better. Our breakfast and lunch cooking went smoothly.
Casey even made coffee, with a paper towel as her filter!
The dogs all hung in the lake for a little bit because it was pretty warm out in the sun. The white one usually hates water, so it was fun to see them all enjoy it for a minute.
These are the dogs- Daisy on the left, Hazel in the middle, and Whitt on the right.
Hazel was the only dog that actually swam.
And this was our last picnic before we left! The dogs love to stare at your food in hopes that you'll drop some or just willingly give them some.
Our camping faves from this trip:
Well, it was a great 24 hour trip and we are planning to take another trip in two weeks for Labor Day. And I'm sure many more after that. Where should we go? We would love to hear your favorite places to camp, it doesn't even have to be near Nashville!
If you liked this post and would like to see more like it, please pin the image below!
xo, Savannah
**This post contains affiliate links.
SaveSave
SaveSave
No comments