Happy Monday! I hope you had a lovely weekend. I had an…interesting weekend haha. It was fun but a little spooky and very cold.
Tyler and I have been wanting to go camping since we moved to Tennessee. Ozark National Forest is nearby in Arkansas, and has many beautiful campgrounds and hiking trails. After a busy few weeks of moving and traveling home for the holidays, we finally had an open weekend to go. I didn’t realize that it was falling on Friday the 13th!
Our Friday started out a little odd, with a large internet outage in our area…extra weird on Friday the 13th. Since we both had some work to wrap up, we had to wait for the Internet to be restored before we could head out for the campground. Unfortunately that led to us getting on the road later than we had planned. At the end of our ride, we were driving through mountains and windy roads in the middle of absolutely NOWHERE. I have never seen towns that small. We kept joking that is was the beginning of a horror movie.
When we got to the campground, we were shocked to find out we were the only folks there. Literally not one other soul in sight. I figured we may be the only folks braving the temperature in a tent, but I certainly thought there would be some RVs or pop-ups camping since this seemed like a pretty popular campsite online. But nope, nada. I immediately starting freaking out. I was so spooked that we had just driven through a huge campground in the middle of the forest and no one else was there. Tyler offered to turn around and drive the three hours back home if I was too spooked, but I’m not quitter. And while you may be thinking we’re completely nuts, we decided to spend the night.
We got our tent set up at the site closest to the bathhouse, cooked hot dogs, made s’mores and relaxed by the fire. We got ready for bed with our million thick blankets, and were still so cold haha. It was doable, as it’s been in the 50s during the day here, but we were cold and didn’t sleep well. We woke up early and decided that one night of poor sleep was enough for the weekend, and that we would head back home after exploring and hiking.
We got ready, packed up our tent and went to the visitor center. The folks there were extremely kind and pointed out the best places to hike and explore. We saw such beautiful waterfalls and caverns, it totally made the cold night of sleep worth it. We are definitely planning to head back once the weather warms up again!
We were very tired after we got home on Saturday, so the rest of our night basically consisted of Christmas movies, relaxing, and Mexican takeout. We were happy to get a full night of sleep in our warm apartment.
Have you gone tent camping during the colder months?
Are you thinking we are absolutely nuts for camping on Friday the 13th? Or have I just watched too many crime shows? 🙂
-Morgan