Brief Review of Standing Indian Campground.

Standing Indian is among our favorite National Forest campgrounds. It's a Nantahala National Forest facility located near Franklin, North Carolina. It's located near the NC/GA/SC border. Within a short drive is the Highlands area (packed with more waterfalls than you can imagine), the Blue Wall plunging down into the South Carolina Piedmont, and the spine of high mountains leading up from Georgia toward the Great Smoky Mountains.

For natural beauty the area is very hard to match. The mountain slopes are clothed in dense hardwood forests. There are many summits that crack the 5,000-foot mark. Streams and waterfalls can be found very close to the campground, and the Appalachian Trail winds its way over Standing Indian Mountain which looms over the vicinity and lends its name to the campground.

Oh. And there are normally lots and lots of bears here. The bear population in this area is about as dense as it gets.

The campground itself is very large and consists of four loops. Our favorite loop (#1) hugs the main creek and offers a number of creekside campsites. Our favorite site (#13) was unavailable so we stayed at site #16. This proved to be a bit of a mistake when a front moved through (the remnants of a Gulf hurricane) and dumped extremely heavy rain on us ceaselessly for more than 48 hours. The creek swelled beyond its banks and part of our campsite was inundated with water.

This was after the rains let up a bit and the lake that formed beside our campsite (flooding the picnic table) subsided .

Much as with our last camping trip, this one had us sidelined due to the inclement weather. My favorite pastime when I go camping is to hike to mountain summits and to hidden waterfalls. This was denied me on this trip because of the storm. Well, the next time we go we know to avoid campsite #16 if heavy rain is in the forecast.

Each loop at Standing Indian provides a bathhouse with flush toilets, sinks, and separate hot showers. The bath facilities are quite nice and there seem to be enough of them to avoid having to stand in line to use the showers. Of course we weren't there in high season, so this might not be the case when every site is occupied by a family.

The creek just across from our campsite. Its rushing waters would have lulled us to sleep if the pounding rain on the roof of our trailer hadn't done the same. The day after I took this photo the creek (Kimsey Creek?) was a good four feet deeper than in this photo and the banks were underwater.

There are no water or electric hookups at the campsites, but this isn't a problem due to the campground bath facilities. And if you have a travel trailer (as we do), then you generally don't actually need water and electric at the site. We carried our generator along and ran that when we needed, and our onboard water tank was full.

Since I couldn't hike as I wished, we ended up taking some long drives to see nearby sites that didn't require clear skies. One day we drove the Wayah Road which is lined with waterfalls and cascades. We skipped the drive to the shoulder of Standing Indian Mountain where we could have had a short hike to the summit. There is also a road to the top of Wayah Bald (another nearby mile-high peak), but we passed that one up because of the pea soup we knew would greet us at the end of the road and the top of the mountain.

An impressive cascade along Wayah Road.

Another day we took the hour-long drive over to Cataloochee Valley in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. While there we saw the restored elk herds and took advantage of that to take over one hundred photos of the enormous deer, returned to the South after about two hundred years absence.

Our trip was dampened a bit by the terrible weather, but as I like to say, even in crappy weather the forest beats the city any time. We relaxed a lot, sat and observed the trees, did some reading, and generally took it easy. Which is what a vacation is for.

Yay! The elk have returned to the Smokies!