A Perfect Fall 'Glamping' & Hiking Weekend Just Outside Chattanooga

I finally had my first glamping experience.

Now, when I say "glamping," I mean a step above camping but still without most of the creature comforts you'll get from a traditional hotel room or vacation rental. I have to make that distinction because I’ve also seen "glamping" listings with AC, hot running water, full kitchens and flat-screens. All for the low-low price of $500 a night.

That's not camping or glamping. That's just a luxury hotel room in the woods — even if it is shaped like a yurt.

Over Halloween weekend, I booked a glampsite for my husband and me in Fort Payne, Alabama, which is tucked into the Lookout Mountain region just south of Chattanooga. It was a chance for us to unplug for a couple of days, do some hiking and spend quality time with each other. Quality time that didn't involve endlessly scrolling Netflix trying to decide on something to watch.

And although plenty of my friends warned me that sleeping in the woods on Halloween was just asking to get ax murdered, I was willing to take that risk. 

Besides, we had a guard dog.

A very pleasant fella unless you mess with his mama.

(Amber Harding Snyder)

The site had everything we needed: a tent up on a platform with a real, queen-sized bed, an outhouse, a fire pit, a camping stove, a couple of cast iron skillets, plates and utensils, and a cooler with potable water. It was in a peaceful, private spot in the woods, where our German Shepherd could sniff to his heart's content.

The host also left us two axes for cutting firewood. So, you know, head on a swivel out there.

Not sponsored, but feel free to email me at Amber.Harding@outkick.com if you want the Airbnb listing — as long as you don't mind cold showers. But we'll get to that in a second.

Hiking North Alabama's DeSoto State Park

DeSoto State Park, one of North Alabama's most scenic hiking spots, sits on top of Lookout Mountain. Not really knowing what to expect, we combined a couple of the more popular hiking trails on the AllTrails app (shoutout to that Peak membership) and planned to get about 8 miles in on Friday.

Halloween hiking. Spooky!

The plan was to combine the DeSoto White Trail with the Laurel Falls Trail, but it quickly turned into a choose-your-own-adventure.

This park is beautiful and well maintained. But the hiking trails are confusing AF. They are all named after colors (orange, yellow, red, blue, aqua, green, violet, white, silver, orange-silver connector and "old" silver) and they intersect constantly.

For example, we started on the White trail and somehow ended up on the Silver. Once we realized that, we had to backtrack about a half mile to get back to our planned route. At first, my husband thought I was just a horrendous navigator. But then we discovered the real problem: both the White and Silver trails are marked with white paint on the trees. And the trails intersect. 

Apparently, no one thought that one through. Or the Home Depot ran out of silver paint.

Eventually, we gave up on navigating altogether and just freely wandered, jumping from trail to trail and making sure we saw each of the advertised waterfalls. Aside from slipping on a wet rock and earning myself a nasty butt bruise, our 9.5-mile freestyle adventure turned out pretty cool.

It hurt my pride more than my tailbone. A little kid laughed at me, too.

During our hike, we passed several campgrounds at DeSoto — everything from primitive sites to fancy campgrounds with full hook-ups, bathhouses and WiFi, if that's more your speed. I'm told the park is also home to an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a cozy restaurant inside an old 1930s lodge, but we didn't visit either of those.

After all, why eat at a restaurant when your husband can cook you a delicious steak and potato dinner over the fire at your campsite?

It was Friday night, by the way, that I realized the problem with going hiking and glamping on the same trip. It was around 40 degrees after the sun went down, and there was no way in hell (or in Alabama) that I was going to take an ice-cold camp shower. Fortunately, our hiking wasn't too strenuous, so I gave myself a full-body scrub with Mike's Dude Wipes and called it a night.

I won't publish the colloquial term for that sort of "bath," but if you know, you know.

Hiking Cloudland Canyon State Park: Bear Creek Backcountry Trail

Given the strange new place and the coyotes howling incessantly for most of the night, our anxious dog Rocky slept much more soundly than I thought he would. So imagine my bliss when I woke up well-rested on Saturday morning to the smell of freshly-brewed AeroPress coffee and the campfire my husband had already brought to life.

There are some cups of coffee that just hit different — the calm-before-the-chaos Christmas morning cup, the one you sip over breakfast with your grandpa, or that quiet balcony coffee while watching the sun rise on vacation.

The chilly campfire coffee on a mountain morning belongs in that sacred category.

After we whipped up some eggs, bacon and oats, we headed out to one of our favorite places.

Cloudland Canyon State Park, just across the border in Northwest Georgia, offers some of the most stunning views within an hour of Chattanooga.

We've been to Cloudland several times over the past few years, and it never gets old. If you're an outdoor lover visiting Chattanooga and you want to escape the touristy nature of Ruby Falls and Rock City, I implore you to drive just 30 minutes south and visit this park. 

It has everything — breathtaking overlooks, impressive rock formations, gorgeous waterfalls. And I feel like no one ever talks about it.

So here I am, talking about it.

If hiking's not your thing, Cloudland Canyon State Park has several overlooks right by the parking lot.

(Getty Images)

This time around, we did the Bear Creek Backcountry Trail, an approximately 8.5-mile, fairly strenuous trek. AllTrails will tell you it's 7.4 miles, but, as usual, AllTrails is a dirty rotten liar, and you should not trust it.

You should, however, check out this trail. It starts with a poke through the backcountry campground and then a steep — and I mean steep — descent to Bear Creek. The entire time I was walking down into the canyon, I was acutely aware of the fact that I was going to have to climb back out. And I took pity on future Amber.

I forgot all about the impending misery, though, when we got to the bottom and found the cave. This cave was such a pleasant surprise. It reminded me of a much smaller version of Alum Cave in the Smoky Mountains. Rocky loved the cold creek running through it, and we immediately marked it as our lunch spot on the way back.

Admittedly, once you pass the cave, the trail gets a little less exciting. There's a bit of a climb and a neat rock formation, but then you find yourself wandering in the woods and past the two primitive campsites. There is a nice overlook, though, where we stopped to have a snack.

And Rocky stopped to be tremendously handsome.

Climbing out of that canyon was, as expected, a son of a b*tch. But it only took us 14 minutes, so — in the grand scheme of the weekend — it was nothing. I still complained the whole time, though.

When we got back to the campsite, we were a little too gnarly to skip the shower this time. So my husband, being the resourceful human that he is, heated up a kettle of water over the fire, and we had ourselves a warm sponge bath in the woods.

So don't let anyone tell you that romance is dead after you get married.

Post-Hike Beers

Normally, I use this section to highlight a cool local bar or brewery to visit for post-hike beers, but this time, we didn't hit up any watering holes. (Unless you count the small-town grocery store, which my husband affectionately dubbed "Jim Bob's Grocery Warehouse.")

Instead, we enjoyed a couple of Sam Adams Octoberfests ('tis the season) and a lovely bottle of red at the campsite.

READ MORE HIKING STORIES ON OUTKICK OUTDOORS

Overall, I'd say our first glamping experience was a booming success. Well, except for one thing…

Despite the fact that we had no electricity and no WiFi, I couldn't bear to miss a Vols game. So we fired up the laptop — only to realize the jerks at YouTube TV and ESPN still can't get along.

So there I sat in the middle of the woods, attempting to sign up for a free trial of Fubo via my iPhone's very weak hotspot. Filling out the form, digging out my credit card and setting an alarm to remember to cancel before the trial was up. 

All that work just to watch us lose to Oklahoma and destroy our chance at the College Football Playoff.

But, hey, at least I didn't get ax murdered.

Based in middle Tennessee, Amber is a lover of all things outdoor adventure. Got questions, comments or suggestions for a great hike? Email her at Amber.Harding@outkick.com or find her on Instagram at @AmberHarding.

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