This little Tennessee park is located in Union County. It is about 3 hours from us, so we had a short little drive. The park is rich in CCC history, with a lot of the buildings and rock walls built by them. This park really gave me Sleepaway Camp and Friday the 13th vibes, just because it felt like a vintage summer camp. There are a lot of hiking trails, and you can take the short 1/2 mile hike to a dam, and there are plenty of places to fish, there is a swimming beach, a playground, volleyball, tennis and basketball courts, an exercise area, cabins, a campground, boat rentals, a rec hall that you can rent out, and many different picnic tables and shelters. This park stayed pretty busy, but not overly busy where you can't even find a spot to sit. The swimming beach was the coolest swimming beach we have ever been to. The entire edge is rock wall, but when you get in, it is completely concrete. So it is like a pool, but in the lake. I walked out probably 600 feet, trying to find the end of the concrete but I never did. So you didn't have to worry about walking over rocks and mud when swimming. And the water felt ahhhmazing. It was so warm. It was also really super hot here, so jumping in that lake was perfect. There were a few docks that my kids loved jumping off of. We also visited the small grist mill, and did some fishing. We are very newbie fishers, so we don't really know what we're doing, so we didn't catch anything, but we didn't really see anyone else catch anything either.
This park has 19 cabins, I believe, that are all very rustic. They were super cheap, but there's a reason why. The cabins were really cute, and as I said before, they really made me feel like I was in a 70s-80s summer camp. For starters, the parking was a little sketchy. There's a one lane road with a couple of pull offs with room for one car at each of them. So if you have 2 cars, you'll need to go park up in the overflow parking. You also have to do a multiple point turn to get turned around, cause only a pro could really back out of there. After you park, each cabin has multiple stairs you must carry your stuff up. Ours had about 30. The cabin had a nice screened-in porch with a table and some chairs, there was a full bathroom, a small kitchen, and the rest of the cabin was a living room, dining room, and bedroom together. There is no TV and no wifi. There is an AC but it is right over one of the beds, so whoever sleeps in that one may freeze. The kitchen was SOOOO tiny. There was maybe 2 feet between the cabinets and the stove. And maybe 7 feet deep. There were also only 3 different pans, not many other pots and pans or utensils and the can opener didn't work. So it felt a little more like glamping than a cabin trip. There is no microwave either, and the grill is kind of in the middle of the stairs. Each cabin does not have it's own fire pit either, and as of this review (June 2024), you cannot have a fire inside due to deterioration of the fireplace. There is supposed to be a Cabin Rejuvenation Project, but I am not sure what that will include. Below cabins 14-19 was lake access, so we were able to just walk down our stairs and fish.
