Warriors Path State Park

We just spent a few days at Warriors Path State Park to wrap up our Tennessee adventure.  This was a pretty amazing state park - it's the only one we've been to in Tennessee, so I don't know if they're all up to this caliber, but this one was awesome.  The only downside...I think we had the worst campsite in the whole park.  Most sites had a pretty large and private area for the picnic table, fire ring, and grill, but ours was one of the smallest and our grill was closer to our neighbor's RV than to ours - so much so that we didn't want to use it as the smoke would have gone right in their windows.  So, don't pick site 49 if you stay here!

Our campsite at Warriors Path State Park.  Aaron did an amazing
job of not capturing either of our neighbors in the photo

The park was so nice that we spent most of our time right there, with only a few excursions.  We hiked the lakeshore trail as well as an 'overlook' trail whose overlook was a little underwhelming.  These were both typical natural trails in the woods.

Lakeshore trail

Our favorite trail though - which, looking back, it seems I didn't get a picture of - was around Duck Island.  The park had paved a 0.6 mile trail around the edge of the island, with great water views all the way around.  Once we discovered this trail, we returned multiple times a day.  It was just a great simple walk (or bike ride!) we could do any time during the day.

In addition to this awesome trail, if you're considering this state park in the future...they also had a marina, golf course, disc golf course, multiple playgrounds, mountain bike trails, tennis courts, basketball courts, volleyball courts, horse trails and stable, a swimming pool (currently closed due to COVID), and lots of pavilions.  Perhaps the most unique thing we discovered though was the hammock campground, which looked fairly new - this had posts to hook hammocks up along with fire rings and picnic tables - cool!

The hammock camping area

We did make two excursions during our stay at the state park.  The first was to the Hook and Ladder Distillery in nearby Kingsport.  We did a small tasting here, quite tasty, and they had some unique flavors like honey!  The cool thing about this spot though is that everyone who works for the distillery is an active or retired fireman.  It seemed like a good business to support!

Decorations on the wall of the distillery

Our second excursion was to Bays Mountain.  This is part zoo, part nature center, part hiking area.  I suppose the vast majority of the grounds are covered in a massive network of hiking trails, but we spent most of our time in the zoo area.  We attended a wolf presentation wherein the speaker howled with the wolves - quite entertaining.  We did do a little bit of hiking across a dam at the lake and alongside a cliff.

Standing on the dam

The cliffside trail wasn't actually this close to the cliff...
apparently we had split off on a fake path, but Aaron was 
determined to risk life and limb to stay on the wrong path!

Wolf!

Bays Mountain was remarkably affordable and I'd highly recommend it to anyone.  They have several nature programs kids would enjoy as well.  The Planetarium is currently closed due to COVID but would make a nice addition to an afternoon at this park!

We were very happy with our last stop on our Tennessee trip!  Warriors' Path State Park is so convenient to I-81 and we so enjoyed the park that I imagine we'll return in the future.

At this point we'll be returning the RV to its parking spot on the farm in West Virginia while we spend several weeks visiting with all sorts of family in various locations.  We'll have a week or so in the midst of all that to try and get some last repairs done before heading out again in August or September (exact date yet to be determined).  Stay tuned!