Benton Falls / Kayaking Parksville Lake
Hiking to Benton Falls | Kayaking Parksville Lake from King’s Slough Ramp | January 2023
Today’s adventure started with a long winding car ride heading Southwest from Tellico Plains. We drove through the countryside, passed farms, through woods, and across the Hiwassee River. Here, we drove up the scenic drive to the top of Chilhowee Mountain, and enjoyed the scenic views out to the South and West over the Tennessee River Valley until we arrived at Benton Falls Recreation Area.
There was a pretty expansive trail system here, as well as a (closed) campground. We took Benton Falls Trail, and found the trails to be well marked and in great condition and after a long, peaceful walk in the woods, we reached the creek which lead to the waterfall. While the majority of the trail had been level and without rocks in the way, the path down to the base of the waterfall turned into steeper stairs. It was totally worth it though — the waterfall is tall and impressive, with many small cascades as it falls into the pool below, and thanks to all the recent rain it was very full.
We returned on the Red Leaf Trail making for a 3 mile loop hike, but if we had wanted to wander around the woods longer there were plenty of other ways to do that! Our return trip on the Red Leaf Trail was mostly uneventful, it was obvious that this trail was less traveled but as previously noted, the trail system was really easy to follow.
We returned to our car, and on our drive back down the mountain we stopped at an overlook featuring a Gazebo lookout. It was kinda trashy, but the views of the valley and Cumberland Plateau were excellent.
After making it down the mountain, we took US-64 West along Parksville Lake, a reservoir of the Oconee River. For the second part of today’s adventure, we wanted to go for our first kayak ride of the year, and Parksville Lake looked like the perfect place. We actually pieced together that Curtis had been upstream from here during the summer after our senior year of high school (2011) and had gone white water rafting on the Ocoee River. Our paddle would be a lot slower and more relaxing than that — Curtis always has plenty of ideas for river kayaking, but I love the simplicity of paddling on still lakes, enjoying the beauty, and not having to pay for and arrange a shuttle. We put in at King’s Slough Boat Ramp on a West finger of the lake, picked a direction and paddled until we couldn’t go any farther. Once we got passed the main part of the lake where the occasional fisherman would go speeding by, we were all alone with the birds and the fish.
Our paddle back to the car featured some big views of Chilhowee Mountain. Our drive back to our temporary home took us by the West side of Chilhowee, before we followed the Hiawassee upriver to one of the many-many hydroelectric plants. We originally thought there was a short waterfall hike near the dam, but the access didn’t feel right to us so we stuck to driving and admiring the rapids we could see. In all, it was another great day spent outside — we just agreed that it felt like too much driving. Thankfully our remaining day trip ideas wouldn’t be quite so far away!
