ALBEMARLE, N.C.-
There came a point, as Saturday night edged toward Sunday morning, when my wife and I wondered if our first camping trip with our children hadn't been a terrible mistake.
The four of us were spread across the floor of our tent at a family campground in Stanly County's Morrow Mountain State Park.
Alex, 5, was passed out at one end; my wife, Sarah, lay unhappily awake at the other.
In the middle, our 3-year-old daughter Liza and I swapped places every time she changed her mind about whether she preferred my sleeping bag or hers, a tango interrupted only by her complaints.
"Daddy, it's too hot."
"Mommy, it's too cold."
"Mommy and Daddy, I don't want to go to sleep."
It was almost precisely the sort of dire scenario Sarah and I envisioned when we selected Morrow Mountain as the destination for our maiden voyage into the great outdoors. The idea was to find a drive-in campsite that would afford an easy escape should something go seriously awry.
Like, say, an insomniac preschooler.
As it turned out, we never needed to test our Volkswagen station wagon's skills as a getaway car. Liza eventually passed out, and Sarah and I logged six hours of sleep before Alex woke up, eager for a breakfast of blueberry pancakes and bacon over the campfire. Even in our groggy state, we had to admit it wasn't a bad way to start a Sunday.
In nearly all respects, Morrow Mountain proved a perfect venue for our initial foray into family camping, considering that neither Sarah nor I had logged much backwoods time since our teenage years.
Just six miles east of Albemarle and across Lake Tillery from Uwharrie National Forest, the park is almost exactly in the center of the state–easily drivable from the Triangle, the Triad or our home in Charlotte.
It offers six fully equipped family vacation cabins that can be rented by the week and 106 family campsites that are first-come, first-served–just drive up, pitch your tent and pay $15 per night when a park employee comes around to collect your money. He'll even sell you wood for your campfire at $3 a bundle.
With campsites crowded in close proximity around one of three separate loops in the family camping area, you won't have any illusion that you've escaped civilization, but shared bathrooms (including hot/cold showers) are nearby, along with water that's safe for drinking and cooking.
A ranger patrols the campgrounds in the evening, enforcing a 10 p.m. deadline for quiet.
Having a drive-in campsite gave us novices plenty of leeway to bring along creature comforts like an ice-filled cooler for perishables, some books and toys for the kids and extra changes of clothes that would have added too much bulk had we needed to hike to a campsite.
For those who prefer camping in the backcountry, Morrow Mountain does offer a primitive campsite that's located a two-mile hike from the park office.
By day, there were plenty of family-friendly activities to keep Alex and Liza entertained. The four of us drove to the top of 936-foot-high Morrow Mountain, with its view of rural Stanley and Montgomery counties and Lake Tillery, and hiked a mile-long loop around the mountaintop. It was an easy hike by adult standards, but epic in the eyes of the kids.
"I think I have to sit down and have some water and take a rest," Alex told me as we arrived back at our car.
All told, the park has more than 15 well-marked miles of trails, ranging in difficulty from easy to strenuous. There are also 16 miles of bridle trails for horseback riding, although overnight camping with horses is not allowed.
The gently rugged terrain of the park stands in contrast to the rolling Piedmont that surrounds it. Morrow and the other peaks found in the park–Sugarloaf, Hattaway and Fall–are the geologic remnants of the Uwharrie Mountains, one of the oldest ranges in the eastern United States.
Morrow Mountain's 4,700 acres were set aside starting in the 1930s, with many of the park's permanent structures built by Depression-era work crews from the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps. You can see that era's characteristic architecture in the stone bathhouse that serves the park's swimming pool. Open daily during the summer months, the pool ($4 per adult, $3 per child 3-12) was a hit with our kids.
The main park road dead-ends at Lake Tillery, where we rented a flat-bottomed canoe ($5 for the first hour, $3 for each additional hour) for a short paddle across the flat waters of the lake and up the Pee Dee River, with a good view of the 210-foot-high Badin Dam to the north.
A boat ramp also offers access for motorboats, and fishermen cast their lines from the banks or off a fishing pier.
Also in the park are a modest natural history museum and the reconstructed homestead of Dr. Francis Kron, who in the 19th century was the first physician to settle in the area.
Heading back home at midday Sunday, it was just 15 minutes into Albemarle and a kid-satisfying fast-food lunch. An hour later, we were back home in Charlotte, ready to contemplate where our tent and sleeping bags might take us next.
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This week's advice: Morrow Mountain State Park is a short distance from N.C. highways 24/27 in Stanly County, approximately six miles east of Albemarle. The state Division of Parks and Recreation Web site––lists activities available and has easy links to directions, a list of fees and other information about the park.
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