Located in Rock Island, Tennessee, the beauty of this state park is just unmatched. If you love waterfalls, massive rock walls, swimming holes, hiking, kayaking, then this park is for you! Right from the start, as soon as we pull into the park, there is a little pull-off where you can see so much of the gorge. It was huge and so wonderful to see. You can hike down into the gorge and you can even swim down there in certain areas (always check the maps. Some areas are dangerous to swim). There is also an old cotton mill that you can see that was closed in 1902, although it is all boarded up. Across the street is a little spring castle that you can walk up to. My kids thought it was so cool because it was like a tiny little castle or gnome house and there is a pool of water at the top that is crystal clear. The park offers miles of hiking trails, but you don't even have to hike to see some of the views. You can see the falls up close by just driving, or you can hike down and see it even more. The park has a playground area with 3 small playgrounds, a field, and a picnic area, but there is a very short trail that leads to an overlook of the gorge. There is also a swimming beach where you can swim in the lake, which we thought was so beautiful because there is a huge rock wall right across from the beach. There are rock walls all over the place and it was just so awesome to see. The park has a campground and cabins for lodging. The only real complaint about this place is that it was HOT. There were a lot of storms during our stay so it would be crazy humid, and all we wanted to do was jump in the lake, but the lake was a bit cold.
The park has 10 cabins, all the same look and style and these were absolutely, hands-down some of our favorite cabins. The cabins in Tennessee are so affordable and cheap as far as cabins go. They may not be anything super nice, but you cannot beat the price. Our cabin had 2 bedrooms downstairs and a loft bedroom upstairs-5 beds altogether, 2 full baths, a kitchen, living room, laundry room, 2 tvs, wifi, a front and back porch, an outside table and fire ring and grill. We really really loved our stay. One big thing we really noticed that is so different from GA's parks-cottages in GA are rarely booked through the week, while TN's cottages are usually booked up even during the week. But in GA, you rarely see your neighbors. I actually prefer seeing people out and about, grilling, playing, riding bikes, etc...and you don't see that in GA's parks at all, but people really do that in TN. We had a fire one evening and you could just look down the whole row of cottages and see every single cabin had people out having fires.
