After my camping trip in October to the five Alabama State Parks that were on the chopping block due to lack of funding and moving monies, I came home and immediately began planning my next adventure. There were a remaining 17 parks to visit after the five I went to, so that was my big decision: which parks should I choose to go to next?

I looked at the parks farthest away from here and started there. After much research and “Google-mapping,” I decided to travel to the seven state parks north of Birmingham. I was killing two birds — or rather seven — with one stone. I wanted to spend at least one night at each park that allowed overnight camping, so I knew it would be a longer camping trip. The list of activities is almost never ending at these parks and around the parks, so unfortunately, my dog, Ellie needed to stay home.

I made the final decision to visit Rickwood Caverns State Park, Joe Wheeler State Park, Monte Sano State Park, Cathedral Caverns State Park, Lake Guntersville State Park, Buck’s Pocket State Park and DeSoto State Park.

I received a phone call from my mom asking about the trip and telling me she wanted to go with me. I’ll be honest, I was completely surprised. You could’ve knocked me over with a single touch when she said she wanted to go with me. Yes, I grew up camping and my mom grew up camping, but we were in an RV or travel trailer, not a tent. I checked with her several times to make sure she knew we were staying in a tent … for eight nights, seven days.

“Are you sure? You know we’ll be in a TENT, right?”

I also warned her we would be constantly on the move.

“Bring any medicine, splints, everything you need to treat pain because we’re not stopping.”

She was all in, which I was really happy about. It was going to be an adventure, and it would be the first trip I had taken with just my mom. Neither of us had been to these parks; anytime we camped growing up, it was to Florida or somewhere with a beach.

I started mapping our trip, making a budget, calculating gas and the camping costs each night. I also printed out a ton of information about each of the parks, the activities, trails and area attractions.

Another challenge was deciding when to go … due to the funding crisis last year, several of the parks had staff cutbacks, amenities taken away and reduced; this meant a few of the parks were closed during the fall and winter or activities were not offered during this time.

Trust me, I would’ve loved to have visited these north Alabama parks in the fall when the leaves were changing and it would’ve been, of course, cooler. But that wasn’t an option if I wanted to visit these seven parks at once.

So, June 20 through 27 it was.

From the time my mom decided to go on this trip to when we determined the dates of travel, my sister, Chloe’, decided she wanted to trek with us — even better. Still, it was the first girls’ trip we had ever had … and it was going to be quite the experience.

The day before we were scheduled to leave was Father’s Day, so we all met at my parent’s house with all the items we’d been “assigned” to bring and decided to pack the car Sunday night (or the entire day, it turned out). This would make it easier for us to get up early and head out the following day.

Chloe’ and her husband stayed with me Sunday night (he housesat for me and watched Ellie for the week — thanks, Randy)!

Our alarms went off at 5:30 a.m. with the plan to leave south Baldwin County at 6 a.m. We did run a little late, but we were supposed to arrive at our first park at 1 p.m., so it was no big deal. After picking up Mom in Spanish Fort and picking up some items Chloe’ left at her home in Stapleton, we were finally off for a week of adventures and new experiences. Something I wanted to do this week as we were traveling around was to find interesting places along the way and stop to explore before heading to the next park. We started off right at Peach Park in Clanton. I always stop at the Jet Pep across the street for gas but have never gone into Peach Park. We stopped at Chick-fil-A for my sister to get breakfast that morning and my mom had been craving a peach milkshake or ice cream since she saw the ad for Chick-fil-A’s peach milkshake on the sign out front. This stop was perfect. We walked the trails behind the building, spent time looking at all the souvenirs and T-shirts and Mom got her peach ice cream. My favorite part about Peach Park was watching the doughs being made for the desserts and watching the ladies peel and cut the peaches in the back.

A few hours later, Rickwood Caverns near Warrior in north central Alabama came into view. After passing the swimming pool, we headed to the gift shop to buy our tickets for the cavern tour and reserve our camping spot for the night. There were four school bus loads of children laughing and screaming — it must’ve been a summer day camp spending the day at the park. This was a sign this trip was going to be a completely different experience than my travels last year. I became even more excited. I bought our tickets for the tour, took a quick bathroom break and headed up the hill to the cavern entrance.

I’ve been to two caverns before, one in Mariana, Florida, and The Lost Sea in Tennessee. I knew what we were in for so I was excited to start the tour. It lasted one hour and the tour was about one mile. There were over 300 stairs in the caverns, over 100 which were at the end of the tour to climb out of the cave. All of the stairs were cement blocks placed by boy scouts that discovered the cave. Formations included the birthday cake, drapes, fat man squeeze and much more. We had a small group of nine, so we had plenty of time to take photos of the formations. Toward the end of the tour, our guide showed us an underground pool. A diving team explored the pool many feet in and down, but had a malfunction in their diving equipment and no one’s been exploring since. No one knows just how far back and deep this underground pool goes or where it goes or comes from. The park has added dye to the water, but can’t find where the water goes. There is a pipe from this underground pool that supplies water to the pool in the campground, which is extremely cool — literally. Rickwood Caverns pool is known for being so cold because that water is coming from the underground pool in the caverns. After the tour and catching our breath from climbing the stairs the way out of the cave, we took to our campsite, No. 13. Chloe’ and I decided to walk around the park after we set up the tent. We found a 1.25-mile trail we decided to take. This was the first real hike I think I’ve ever been on; lots of rocks, climbing up and down, uphill and downhill constantly, but it was fun — and well-marked. After we bought ice from the park office, we began to cook dinner — hamburgers and french fries. Just because we were camping, didn’t mean we were going to skimp on the food. Oh, Chloe’ and I played the most epic game of mini-Jenga I’ll probably ever play.

The next day, we woke up, ate breakfast and packed the car. The next stop on our trip was Joe Wheeler State Park in Rogersville. The three of us were riding along when we passed an exit sign with “Tuscumbia” written on it. My mom said something along the lines of, “Isn’t someone we learned about in fourth grade Alabama History from Tuscumbia?”

Heather Whitestone immediately came to my mind, but that wasn’t who Mom was thinking of.

“What about Helen Keller?”

That was it. She was born and raised in Tuscumbia. Her house, Ivy Green, was only about 20 miles out of the way, so we decided to detour and take an impromptu history lesson. Eighty-five percent of the furnishings in the home are original, so what you’re seeing is what the Kellers used every day. The water pump in the backyard is the original water pump where Keller was taught the word “water” by her teacher, Anne Sullivan. This pump is where Keller had her breakthrough about learning what water was, how to spell it and sparked her interest in learning other items. There is a room in the home that houses Keller’s 12 books she wrote, a braille typewriter, movie posters in other languages for “The Miracle Worker” and much more. After a few hours at Ivy Green, we tried to find a place to have lunch. I remembered passing a nice park on the way to Helen Keller’s home, so we returned there for some grub. It was Spring Park, and it had a train that traveled around the park, a huge pond with a large light-up swan in the middle of it, small amusement park rides for children and the world’s largest man-made waterfall. Cold Water Falls is 80 feet wide and 48 feet tall, and made from 1,780 tons of Colbert County Sandstone. Over 4 million gallons of water passes over these falls per day.

After lunch, we were set back on our path to Joe Wheeler. We decided to go ahead and set up camp for the night and started on dinner and relaxing a bit before dark. We fried salmon croquettes on our propane stove and cooked macaroni and cheese and green beans that night.

Joe Wheeler was the first resort state park I’d been to. The park is 2,550 acres and is divided by the Tennessee River, which forms the 69,700-acre Wheeler Lake.

The next morning it was the same routine: breakfast, packing up and our next adventure. We explored the park to see what all we could do and we found a hiking trail that led from the campground to the lodge and marina on Wheeler Lake. It was five miles, there and back. The lodge was very nice, and cool; a nice break to sight see before heading back to the campground. We saw a deer that was so used to humans, she just looked at us as we walked past her. She was sitting for a while and then got up as we were walking closer, along the trail. She stared us down as we continued along. On the way back from the lodge and marina she was still there and eventually trotted off. We made our way back to the car and had lunch under a pavilion overlooking the swimming area. Many people were out on the lake enjoying the warm sun and cool water. We checked out of Joe Wheeler after exploring all the other areas, like the cabins and new lakeside cottages — which my family has decided we will be returning to for Thanksgiving next year. After exploring shops in downtown Rogersville, we set off to our next site.

The next hour was spent driving to Monte Sano State Park in Huntsville. This night was a hotdogs-and-more-french-fries kind of night. That evening, Chloe’ and I traveled the Japanese Tea Garden trail near the park office, but that was it. We were exhausted and felt like we’d hit a brick wall; it was clear this was the half-way point in our trip. One thing did keep me excited about the following day, though.

The next morning, we drove to the top of the mountain in Monte Sano and traveled back down the mountain to Scottsboro to the Unclaimed Baggage Center, just a few minutes out of our way. It was like TJ Maxx or Ross, multiplied times 100! Bicycles, iPads and surf boards are some of the items that have never been claimed at the airport and find a home here. There were racks and racks and racks of clothes, rooms filled with sporting goods, shoes, designer bags, sunglasses and jewelry, home goods … the list is endless. Along the walls are museum items not for sale that have been lost in airports around the world, like flirting fans, wooden African chest plates, Hoggle from "Labyrinth” and much more. A customer even started his own stand up paddleboard company with paddleboards he bought at the Unclaimed Baggage Center.

Next week, you’ll find out about my favorite park on the trip, our hours spent at the only day-use park, as well as the two days we spent at DeSoto State Park.