This weekend, we hit the road to Rock Island State Park in Rock Island, TN.  Even though it’s about 4 hours from home, West Tennesseans know little about it.  When we told people we were coming, the exclusive response was “Where is that?”  Rock Island is located outside of McMinnville, TN, on the Cumberland Plateau.

Our primary purpose for the trip is to run in the Rock Island 5 Miler, part of the Tennessee State Park Running Series.  Now that we have the camper and the state parks are dog friendly, I hope to do as many as I can.  Although I typically run at least 6 miles once a week, I may have bitten off more than I can chew on this one.  The locals are already telling us how bad the hills are on the route.

Since we are early risers, we took Pearl for a ride to get a lay of the land.  Rock Island has some of the biggest waterfalls I have ever seen.  There are several hiking trails that we will be tackling this afternoon and tomorrow, but if hiking isn’t your thing, you can see the waterfalls, like Great Falls and Twin Falls, from overlook parking area and/or picnic areas.  I highly recommend checking out Rock Island for a long weekend.  Pictures will follow in subsequent posts.