Ozone Falls

Yesterday was the last full day of my Tennessee trip, but my parents and I stopped by Ozone Falls on Fall Creek (not the same Fall Creek from Fall Creek Falls State Park) in Crab Orchard, TN today, which is on the way home. I originally intended to stop by Ozone Falls as a warm-up on the way in on Sunday (August 11), but I had to do Rock Island State Park that day because of their dam-release schedule, so I ended up doing Ozone Falls as a cool-down (not literally, I assure you) on the way out. Ozone Falls has a plunge pool, but I wasn’t expecting it to be very deep based on the water levels I had seen at other places this week. This was more about just taking a quick stop to see a picturesque waterfall. In fact, it is so picturesque that it was featured in the live-action version of The Jungle Book (1994).

We checked out of our cabin at 10 AM and drove about an hour to Crab Orchard. The parking area to Ozone Falls was just a pull-off on the side of the road that could accommodate about six cars, although some people were parking along a gravel road across the street. The walk to the top of the falls was only a few hundred feet from the road. There wasn’t a very good view of the falls from here. The only way to see it was to lean over the edge of the 110-foot high ledge. I got on my stomach and looked over, and I tried to get some pictures of the waterfall by holding my phone over the edge.

( Click here for the full trip report with pictures and videos )

In summary, Ozone Falls is a picturesque waterfall even at low flow. The high drop and picturesque rock amphitheater in conjunction with the clear pool and surrounding greenery produces an exotic look that gives it a tropical feel, so I can see why they used it in The Jungle Book. Ozone Falls doesn’t have much going on from a swimming hole standpoint. The water would need to be a few feet deeper than what I saw today for the plunge pool to be a legit swimming hole. I have seen pictures where the water is much higher, so I’m guessing the plunge pool is a serviceable swimming hole during rainier times of the year. So yeah, Ozone Falls is probably not the type of place I would spend all day at, but it is definitely a worthy road-trip stop that offers spectacular views with little effort.

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( Click here to see my ranking for the swimming holes and waterfalls I visited on this trip )

And that concludes my Tennessee trip. This was my first swimming hole marathon in the southeast since the 2016 washout, and I would say this one was much more successful, mainly on account of the weather being cooperative. It only rained one out of the six days I was there, which is pretty good considering that I've had this trip on the back-burner for two years due to lack of extended stretches of dry weather. I guess the Farmer’s Almanac extended forecast did me right after all. One thing I liked about Cumberland Plateau swimming holes as opposed to Appalachian Mountain swimming holes is that the Cumberland swimming holes had much more moderate water temperatures, ranging from 69 °F to 80 °F, which made swimming more refreshing an enjoyable. I knocked out everything I wanted to do on this trip, even though it required shuffling some things around to accommodate closures and re-openings, but overall I would say this trip was a success.

For the past couple of years, I have been going to California in lieu of doing this Tennessee trip, but this year I am doing both. I’ll be back in Raleigh for a week, and then I’ll be off to California for another round of swimming holes before fall rolls in.