Let the camping season begin! Desoto Falls - Chattahoochee National Forest

2009-04-06T07:59:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first installment of my blog, A City Girl's Guide to the Great Outdoors. The goal of this blog is to show my female counterparts that getting outside to smell the fresh air isn't all that bad. With the current economic situation, everyone is looking for ways to have a great time on a limited budget. Camping is a great and economical way to explore new places, meet new people and have a constant change in surroundings. I feel everyone should go outside and sleep under the stars, at least once. There is no better way to appreciate this wonderful planet than taking an awesome hike through the forest, finding that nice clearing on a mountain and gazing out for miles and miles. The only "negative" thing about going out to these far and way places is just that; they're far and away. But do not fret ladies, I will show you ways to bring the comforts of home with you on your adventures. No taking dumps in dug out holes, no eating pork & beans out of the can, and hell, no sleeping on a cramped ass pad on the cold ground! Magnificent meals prepared in dutch ovens, queen sized double-decker air mattresses and tent ceiling fans will make you feel right at home. Glamping (glamarous camping) can be had by anyone and it's my job to show where to go and how to do it.

Our camping season adventure starts off in the North Georgia mountains in the Chattahoochee National Forest at Desoto Falls. We arrived at Desoto Falls just before dark on Friday evening.
We unpacked all of our gear, pitched our tent and attempted to start a fire. Note to self (and everyone else)...never ever forget starter logs. We thought it would be cool and awesome to get a fire stick like Bear Grylls and try it the non-glamperous way...umm no. It has been raining here in Georgia for weeks and all of the "tinder" was wet, so basically starting a fire with nothing but a fire stick was damn near impossible. Thankfully we had a notepad in the car, so I began to tear off pieces of notepaper and stuff them underneath our woodpile in the firepit. I lit the paper, and the fire began to spread slowly but surely. My husband (we'll call him Green Bay Man) decided it would be an awesome idea to throw the entire notepad in the fire. Yes, that's right, throw all of our fire-starting notepad paper into the fire all at once, not crumpled or anything. Nice. After an hour of blowing and wrestling with the fire it finally got going, so we moved onto the next thing...inflate the air mattress. We've got a very glamperous queen-sized double decker air mattress. It has an air pump built into it, for inflation and deflation. It plugs into a power inverter (another necessity for glamping, we'll get to this a little later). An air mattress is one of the most badass necessities for glamping, I highly recommend it. I got mine from Target, and I believe it was less than $60. Green Bay Man pulled out the air mattress, plugged it into the power inverter, and we got nothing. "Try it again" I say, slightly panicing. Nothing. The pump in the air mattress died. Daaaaayyyuuumn. The wind was howling at this point, and the temperature dropped to 41 with sustained winds of 25 mph. It was cold as HELL! I said screw it, I'm sleeping in the back of the Honda Element. Green Bay Man said he was too manly for that decided to sleep on the cold ground in the tent. This is the difference between glamping and camping. While he was freezing his ass off in the tent, I was enjoying a movie on my iPod video player in the confides of my cozy Honda Element, HA! Why suffer if you don't have to? Ladies, I know you feel me.

The next day was wonderful, the sun was shining bright and the weather was perfect. 73 degrees in the mountains, it doesn't get much better than this. We decided to head to Turner's Corner for breakfast, it was about a mile down from our campsite. While we were there we picked up fire stater logs (yay) and some flies and bait for fishing. We then headed a short .5 miles up the road to Waters Creek, a trophy trout stream. We didn't catch shit, lol. As a matter of fact, I didn't even see a fish, but it was really pretty to see the rapids and the rushing water in the creek. It was so clear you could see 6 feet deep into the water. You can't do that here in Atlanta staring into the Chattahoochee River; you might see a body. We decided to try our luck else where after an hour at Waters Creek, so we headed up 19. We stopped off at Mountain's Crossing, the only man made structure on the Appalachian Trail. This point also happens to be Neel's Gap and Blood Mountain, yessss. There were a lot of people there; cool eclectic hiker folks. My sister refers to them as "granola people". You know, people that like Birkenstocks, hemp clothing and tye dye shirts and Clif bars, basically my kind of crowd :-) We hung out here for a little bit and took in the breathtaking panoramic views, then pressed on to Lake Winfield Scott. The drive up 180 to the lake was quite amazing, I can only imagine what it looks like when the leaves begin to change. I wanted to get out and snap a few shots, but I am scared shitless of heights and I was just not feeling it at the time. We got to Lake Winfield Scott and walked around 1/2 of the lake, it was beautiful. We fished at the lake for an hour or so (GB Man caught a little panfish, I think it was a bluegill) and I got a call from my friend (we'll call her Alligator and him Chief Hard Rocker aka CHR) and she said they were headed up to meet us camping, yay!!! Once I got the news we jetted back to the campsite and waited for them to arrive. Alligator and CHR arrived just in time and saved us by bringing a pump for our mattress plus a few other misc things we forgot (paper towels, newspaper, etc). I love Alligator, she's so smart! GB Man and CHR got the tent and the rest of camp setup while me and Alligator talked and drank Sweetwater 420s, life is good. Once the boys were done setting up we headed down the road to Boggs Creek to try our hands at more trout fishing. I, like a drunken girl, decided to be careless and dropped my camera while getting out of the car. I cracked the LCD on the back of the camera :-( It still shoots just fine, and the display on the back is unaffected, but it sucks. Guess it's a battle wound from the field. I like the sound of "Battle Wounds from the Field" better than "I was drunk and I dropped it", haha. Boggs Creek was amazing, but damn it was redneck. We were strolling along, enjoying the rushing water in the creek, then all of a sudden I get a glimpse of this 350 lb dude wearing boxers and nothing else, oookay. Very gross. We left Boggs Creek (no trout) and headed back to camp to make dinner. I got an 8-qt dutch oven from Amazon, and it is also on my top 10 Glamperous Items for Camping list. This dutch oven is BADASS, and I mean BADASS. We made chicken verde enchiladas for dinner. Who the hell has enchiladas for dinner in the woods? GLAMPERS DO! Dinner was wonderful. For dessert we had a caramel apple crisp, it was great. It was missing ice cream though, I need to figure out a way to bring that next time...

The next morning we got up and made breakfast, in the dutch oven of course! The Mountainman Breakfast consisted of farm fresh eggs, sausage, hash browns and cheese. Now I don't eat eggs, so I was good, but they do and they tore into it. It looked good, but I just can't do eggs, nope, not at all. After breakfast we chilled out a little bit and then broke down camp. Once we were all packed up we headed back up Lake Winfield Scott, because Alligator and CHR weren't with us when we when previously. We stopped at Mountain's Crossing again and checked out the awesome views. It was much more windy than the day before, so that made me kinda scared. I mean, what if a gust of wind blew my ass off of the mountain? Yeah, I'm really afraid of heights. We trekked up to Lake Winfield Scott and got more fishing in. This time GB Man caught 3 fish (I think). I'm not sure if CHR caught anything. I wasn't paying attention to them, me and Alligator were having too much fun staring at the lake chillin'. After fishing at Lake Winfield Scott, it was time to head back to the city and back to reality. An hour and a half later I was back at my condo in ATL, greeted by my lil dachsunds Max and Brownie. Our next adventure won't be a camping trip, but it will be an awesome festival - 420 Fest at Candler Park. Stay tuned!!!

A City Girl's Guide to the Great Outdoors - Glamping for all of Us

Let the camping season begin! Desoto Falls - Chattahoochee National Forest