Jefferson National Forest: Falls of Little Stony

Yesterday, after our adventure at Natural Tunnel State Park, we headed east into Jefferson National Forest and the Bark Camp Campground. We set up our new tent and had some time to kill before dinner. We
decided to take a walk over to the nearby Bark Camp Lake.

Sierra insisted on walking on her own and was a real chatterbox. She kept talking about the train we had seen earlier in the day and the train tracks. Then she kept saying how it "smells good'. After saying "smells good" three times, Noelle finally decided to ask her what it was that smelled good. Sierra replied that it was "trees"! That's my girl! We walked along the lake shore, past a whole lot of fishermen and fisherwomen, and then headed back to our campsite via the roads

for playing

and dinner.

It took Sierra a while to get to sleep last night. She seemed really excited about our day hiking and camping. Despite the fact that she got to bed late, she was up early this morning and ready for a hike. After packing up camp, we hit the road and headed over to the nearby northern trailhead for the Little Stony National Recreation Trail. As we got our stuff ready for the hike, Sierra was obviously excited.

She kept saying "camping and hiking"! We finally got her into the backpack and hit the trail

close to the cascading Little Stony Creek.

I didn't realize it, but we had started from the trailhead that gets you close to the falls quickly.

After crossing over a sturdy wooden footbridge,

we found ourselves at the Upper Little Stony Falls.

There was a set of stone stairs that led down to the base of the falls. We went down and admired the view

for a few minutes before returning to the main trail.

Back on the trail, we soon crossed over another couple of bridges

and then found ourselves at a nice view of the Middle Little Stony Falls.

We kept on the trail, headed downstream, eventually arriving at a nice set of cascades.

We stopped there and let Sierra out of the back pack for a little play time. Then we headed down the trail a little bit further.

Parker seemed to be getting a bit tired at this point, and so the decision was made to turn around. We went back to the cascades we had stopped at earlier for a snack and more play time,

before making the short, uphill climb back to the car along the cascading Little Stony Creek.