Day 3 (Sunday, June 25th) – Frozen Head Park

After feeling sick for a couple of days, Lizette decided to go to a walk-in clinic to get checked out. Her suspicions were confirmed – she has strep throat. She was prescribed antibiotics to take over the next 10 days but should feel better in a couple of days.

The plan was to go to Frozen Head State Park in the late morning to hike to a couple of waterfalls with our friends. Lizette decided to stay back at the farm and rest. But the rest of us headed out for a 45 minute drive to the park. We ran into a bad thunderstorm near the park entrance and waited almost an hour for the storm to pass before heading out on the now soggy trail.

I’m glad we didn’t get deterred by the rain because this was a really nice hike. The first waterfall was of the cascading type which we got to it in about 30 minutes. It was another 30 minutes to the next waterfall. This was a really nice location. It had a good size fall and even an alcove to shield from the rain if needed. The kids all had fun climbing the rocks to the top of the falls and taking pictures in front of it on a log.

Once we had our fill of the falls, we headed back to our vehicles and then on to the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary – a prison facility for the worst of the worst that opened in 1896 and closed in 2009.

I recently toured Alcatraz and this place seemed like it was Alcatraz’s evil step-brother. The conditions seemed awful here and by the looks of it, not much maintenance was done even when it was open. And now that it has been closed for 14 years, it still seems like they have not done anything to it. If I or my kids were thinking about entering the life of crime, this place surely scared us straight.

Since it closed, though, they did convert one building into a distillery so we got to do some whiskey and moonshine tasting. This experience confirmed to me that I am a beer man and nothing more! LOL. Each one I tasted was worse than the other. I am thankful I did not throw up! We did eat dinner at the “Wardens Table” restaurant which was pretty good. Time to head back to the farm and call it a day.