So, as you all probably know at the point, my birthday was a couple of weeks ago. I decided that I wanted to go camping, because I'd never been and we had the opportunity to rent a camping package for free. Originally, we had planned to go to Jekyll Island, because hey, it's the middle of summer and I wanted to go to the beach. We had called and made reservations, but the day before, the weather in Jekyll was set to be really bad, so we cancelled our reservations, and headed up to Helen, which was way closer.  We stayed in Unicoi State Park for the night, and truly the night was totally comical. I knew I didn't want to stay somewhere primitive, so we chose a close walk-in spot. Come to find out, there are black bears active in the area, so I may have freaked out just a little. We walked around a little and made ooey gooey birthday s'mores at a campfire. It was really so awesome (even though it was around 100 degrees outside). So, we climbed into the ten around 9:00 pm, when it was pitch black and we just couldn't even see in front of us. We laid in the tent for a couple hours watching Bob's Burgers on Andre's phone, then it took me around four hours to actually fall asleep. Every noise I heard, I was 100% sure was a bear. Andre was out beside me and I was terrified. I finally fell asleep and at 3:30 in the morning, we awoke to the bottom falling out of the sky! We hadn't placed the rain canopy over the two-piece, lightweight tent. We got up and ran to the car, where we sat until the rain stopped (Still pitch black outside). By the time we got back to the tent, everything inside was soaked. We threw the canopy on top (luckily, because it started raining again). I had a comforter in my trunk, so we threw that down on top of our wet sleeping bags and sleeping pads. At this point, we were wet and cold, so we never actually went back to sleep. 








In the morning, we grabbed some local homemade breakfast at a restaurant on the outskirts of Helen. It was really yummy, and inexpensive. I also got an iced coffee from Jumpin' Goat. The coffee was good, but they only had half-n-half (no milk) and stevia (not sweet-n-low), so I was a little disappointed there. We also hiked up the Anna Ruby Falls (not to be confused with Ruby Falls). The hike was half a mile, but straight up a mountain. We literally stopped three of four times on the way up, but it was beautiful and worth it!












Seriously, y'all. I had so much fun camping for my birthday! We ran into a few issues, but overall, it was a good time! (PS. We probably won't go tent camping again. If we do camping, it will probably be in a yurt.)