Three More National Park Units

    The Lynchburg/Blue Ridge KOA was probably the most pleasant KOA we've stayed at on this trip. All the campsites were nestled amongst trees, and I was amazed at how they had arranged the campsites to feel fairly private even though we were close together as is the rule in KOAs. Most KOAs have sites lined up almost like a parking lot, but not this one, and there were nice little tent sites on their small fishing pond. The campground even had its own 1/2 mile trail through the forest, but of course that was  not quite enough hiking or walking for me. We did manage to get some miles in by walking along the highway a bit to get to a side road that made for a three mile loop. The sign that I am showing a picture of is probably at every KOA we've stopped at, but this is the first time I've noticed it. I appreciated that the first guideline for responsible recreation is to "Be Outside." I couldn't agree more!

Be Outside! I feel sorry for all the folks on the west coast dealing with horrible air quality due to the fires, but when the air quality is safe - go outside and be healthy!

    Sunday afternoon, September 20, we were joined at our campsite by Ted and Kris who moved to Virginia from Eureka, California last summer to be closer to a son and daughter. Their son Todd  moved with them so they are now living close to all of their children and most of their grandchildren and now great grandchildren. It was quite a switch for them having lived in Eureka most of their lives - Kris was even born in Eureka - but it seems to have been a very good move for them at this stage in their lives. We enjoyed visiting with them and went for a short drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway just a couple of miles from the KOA.

Me, Rob, Ted and Kris - haven't seem them for a year, but it felt like we'd just been together - good to have friends across the country!

Of course our little drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway included a little hike on this beautiful creek.

    While visiting with Ted and Kris, Kris told us about Natural Bridge State Park not too far west from where we were, so that was our first stop on Monday, September 21. I don't think I'd ever really heard of this Natural Bridge, but we learned it was quite a tourist attraction in the 18th and 19th centuries and was considered to be a natural wonder of the world in league with Niagara Falls. It was indeed spectacular and the history of it was very interesting. It was surveyed by George Washington around 1750 and purchased along with 157 surrounding acres for the equivalent of $2.40 by Thomas Jefferson in 1784. In 1806, Jefferson leased out a small cave near the bridge for the excavation of potassium nitrate which was used in the production of gun powder.

A "Crazy Horse" that was in the visitor center at Natural Bridge State Park. Not quite sure how the quote on its side related to its other decorations.

Us, with Natural Bridge behind.

This picture is not capable of capturing the awe inspiring site of the 215 foot high natural bridge of stone. There is even a highway going over the top. We think we drove across it, but couldn't really tell when we were on it because of the trees next to the highway.

A waterfall at the turn around point on the trail that went under Natural Bridge and along the creek

    We entered Tennessee on Monday afternoon and found our resting spot for the night at a Harvest Host, Bristol Caverns, not too far across the border. We enjoyed a tour of the caverns on Tuesday morning. I didn't buy anything in the little gift shop, but the various rocks and gemstones they were selling reminded me of my childhood when I had a rock collection of interesting rocks I found around our rural home near Grass Valley, California and ones I occasionally bought at a rock shop not too far from our house. I didn't buy any rocks at Bristol Caverns, but it sure stirred a memory and I was tempted.

Welcome to Tennessee!

Can you see LesThora at the end of the parking lot? 

This stopping spot was right on the highway, but a very quiet place for the night.

The inside of the caverns were quite beautiful and interesting.

These are crickets crawling on the walls. This reminded me of the spiders crawling on the walls of the Indiana Jones Ride at Disneyland. I hate to put it in writing, but some of the natural wonders and beauty we see remind me of various Disneyland locations. 

Walt Disney and his successors have done incredible jobs of imitating the real thing.

    From Bristol Caverns we headed to Great Smoky Mountain National Park where I had managed to get a reservation for one night of camping at Cades Cove Campground. We couldn't believe our luck that the next day, Wednesday, the Cades Cove Loop of 11 miles would be closed to all vehicle traffic and open to bicycles and walkers only. We enjoyed a wonderful bike ride around Cades Cove and stopped at lots of historic sites. It would have been much more difficult to see it all if we'd had to drive big and bulky LesThora around the narrow one way road with limited parking at the points of interest.

Are you tired yet of my trail pictures? I never get tired of trails! This is part of a nature trail near our campground at Cades Cove.

Another hint of the fall color to come after we are west of here

Rob on the bike on the Cades Cove road.

One of the views of the beautiful Great Smoky Mountains from the Cades Cove Loop

The John Oliver Place. John Oliver was one of the first Euro-Americans to settle in Cades Cove. He built this cabin in the early 1820s. A couple asked us if we'd take their picture in front of the cabin and then they offered to take ours. They said we looked much more appropriate in front of the cabin than them - perhaps because they thought we looked old enough? They didn't appear much younger than us:)

The Methodist Church in Cades Cove built in the 19th century. We learned that this church split over the issues of the civil war, as did the whole denomination. While the history placard said the Methodist Church split, in front of a historic Baptist Church, the sign said the church closed for a time because of Confederacy sympathizers who were part of the congregation. We often saw in the history we read in Tennessee about how divided the whole state was in regards to the Confederacy. 

Rob behind the pulpit in the Methodist Church. 

While in the Baptist Church later there was another man standing behind that pulpit when we walked in. Rob called out, "Preach it brother!" The man asked, "Seriously?" and we said, "Yes!" So he read a Psalm from the Bible on that pulpit and then his wife asked if we knew the doxology so the four of us sang it together. There was one other couple in the building at the time and they said that was awesome. We felt like we'd been to worship for the first time in a long time!

A creek in Cades Cove.

    We would have loved to stay longer at Great Smoky Mountain National Park, but one night was the longest I could get a reservation for. The difference in the responses by National Parks and other campgrounds in regard to Covid is quite interesting. Some require only reservations, some allow only first come, first serve, some like Mammoth Cave are at 50% capacity and of course some are closed. We are just grateful for all the beautiful places we have been able to see, enjoy and camp at, even if some things are limited.

    From Great Smoky Mountain NP we headed up toward Kentucky, and found a beautiful state park, Standing Stone, near Hilham, Tennessee. Another beautiful park with much of its infrastructure originally built by the Civilian Conversation Corps in the 1930s. It was pretty rainy while we were there, but I did manage to get a delightful hike in the morning, down, down, down to the nearby lake and back up, up, up to the campground.

LesThora in the campsite at Standing Stone State Park. Notice the leave falling in the picture? 

Actually that leave was suspended on a spider web and it hung there during our whole stay.

A fork in the trail down to the river

Crossing a stream going into the lake at Standing Stone State Park

The Marble playing court at Standing Stone.

We learned that the National Rolley Hole Marbles Championship is held each year at Standing Stone State Park. Before this I didn't know that National Marble Championships were a thing.

I was reminded of rainy days when I was in the sixth grade and we played marbles at recess on the counters in the classroom. We were forbidden to "play for keeps," but of course we did.

A picture of one of the many impressive cuts through stone to form the highways in Tennessee.

    Next we were headed to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky where I was very pleased to have been able to make reservations for Thursday and Friday night in the campground and to get a reservation for a self-guided tour of the cave. Normally there are about 12 different tours you can take, but not during Covid - only a one mile section at the historic entrance is available for a self-guided tour. But before reaching Mammoth Cave NP we needed to stop in Glasgow, Kentucky where we had good enough cell coverage to use my phone for a hotspot so Rob could attend a Zoom meeting of the Investment/Executive Committee of the UMC Endowment Board. We got to Mammoth Cave in the early evening on Thursday, September 24, and walked around a bit, saw lots of deer and figured out where we needed to be for the cave tour on Friday.

Welcome to Kentucky!

Perhaps having the Governor's name on welcome signs is a good way of assuring that the signs are refurbished every time a governorship changes. I don't know why, but I find it interesting that many of the state signs contain the governor's name.

A trail in a nice city park in Glasgow.

While walking around above ground at Mammoth Cave NP you often come across one of these signs that tell what part of the cave is below you. Here is a description of the Methodist Church, a room we were able to visit in the cave. A Methodist pastor would lead his congregation into the cave for Sunday service for hours long preaching. The guide at the site said the congregation was captive because all their torches were placed up by the "pulpit" to illuminate the pastor where he preached for hours and they couldn't walk in the dark - weird!

Just two of the deer we saw as we walked around the park on Thursday night. 

Rob thought I was getting too close when I took this picture, but they just walked on by.

Male deer don't intimidate me as much as mother deer who are known to violently protect their young. They are responsible for more injuries and death to humans than mountain lions which everyone fears.

My happy countenance on my Friday morning hike on the Mammoth Sink Trail. 

Some rock ledges along my morning hike

One of many trees we saw appearing to grow right out of rocks - not just at Mammoth Cave NP, but all over the eastern parks and byways. There really isn't much topsoil on top of all the rock!

More hint of the fall color we will miss.

The historic entrance to Mammoth Cave, the longest cave in the world. 

This is the entrance we went in and out.

Inside the cave. The cave was awesome and inspiring, but not very photogenic.

Looking past LesThora into the 50% capacity campground at Mammoth Cave. 

Keeping it at 50% capacity made for a very secluded feeling of camping - except for the loud music played by someone at a distance for a couple of hours on Friday night.

Part of a trail we walked on Friday morning before leaving Mammoth Cave National Park.

Rob on the trail.

    The next park we are headed to is Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas, a three day drive at our driving pace from Mammoth Cave, but we decided to take a detour to Jackson, Mississippi to visit our grandson Alex. We were looking forward to seeing Alex, but not really looking forward to what would be a three day drive south through Mississippi. However, we "discovered" the Natchez Trace Parkway. We have actually been on part of it several years ago when we were on a mission recovery trip in Alabama following a tornado event there in 2011, but I hadn't really thought about where it was. This was another one of the many wonderful serendipities of this journey. The Natchez Trace was route followed by wildlife, indigenous people, settlers, explorers and the Kaintuck traders from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. The 444 mile parkway today, a unit of the National Park System,  loosely follows that route. We got to spend 3 days leisurely driving through beautiful hardwood forest, stopping occasionally to take a walk or read an historical marker. We happened on Meriwether Lewis' death and burial site. I had long ago read and been fascinated by the journey of Lewis and Clark as they sought a water passage to the west and had read about Lewis' death most likely by suicide, but I never thought about where his life ended. It was interesting to be reconnected to this history. Not far from the Lewis memorial was the Harvest Host, Camp Wonder Wander, that I had reserved for the night. I think that is how we happened to "find" the Natchez Trace Parkway was in finding the Harvest Host that was just a few miles off the parkway.

    The second night on the parkway we camped at Jeff Busby, a free campground right on the Natchez Trace where we hiked a nice little trail to one of the highest points in Mississippi - 604 feet! While we had a beautiful, serene time as we retraced history we were constantly reminded of how dangerous the journey was from Natchez to Nashville in years past. The Kaintucks would take there livestock and goods down the Mississippi to New Orleans to sell, including selling the barges for lumber, and then walk for a month north to Nashville on the trace. In addition to the threat of robbery for the money they'd earned selling their goods they had to deal with things like walking through alligator infested swamps - my favorite thing to be afraid of. I really wanted to see one of the swamps at an interpretive site, but as we approached it near Jackson we found it to be closed because of damages we think occurred about two years ago from tornados. While driving through the swamp area we saw hundreds of trees that had obviously been blown down across the parkway and had to be cleaned up. That tornado event was part of a flooding event that brought our grandson to Jackson in March to work for FEMA as a logistics person helping to help those affected by that disaster. Alex will be in Jackson until December or January and then either take a break or move on to another disaster recovery site in the country.

A sad ending to the life of Meriwether Lewis. I had always understood his gunshot wounds to be self-inflicted, but we read of much speculation that he may have been murdered.

A rooster at Camp Wonder Wander

Donkeys at Camp Wonder Wander

    Not too far south of Camp Wonder Wander we pulled off the Natchez Trace to check out the Wayne County Visitor Center in Tennessee just a few miles before crossing into Alabama. We had a very interesting conversation with the host there and he told us about a "don't miss" site just over the Alabama state line adjacent to the parkway that would not have any signs. Another wonderful serendipity. Tom Hendrix wrote a book called If the Legends Fade about his great great grandmother's journey back to her Cherokee ancestral lands after being relocated via the "Trail of Tears." Hendrix didn't just write a book to remember her, he built stone walls. He said, "All things shall pass. Only the stones will remain." As the host at the visitor center said there was no sign indicating where the stone walls were, but his directions were good and we arrived at an awe inspiring tribute to one woman's journey. We walked between the stone walls, some more than 12 feet wide, marveled at the years and determination behind building them, met Tom Hendrix' widow (he died in 2017) and heard more of the story from her. She lives in a little cottage on the property she and her husband owned. We met her because there was a copy of the book at the entrance to the walls with a sign that said to walk to the front porch if you wanted to purchase a book. One thing we were curious about was where all the stones had come from. Clearly they couldn't have all come from his property and they didn't all look alike. Mrs. Hendrix told us that her husband first started building the wall in 1984 with rocks he found at the river where he used to go fishing. She said he stopped fishing and started collecting rocks. When nearby farmers heard what he was doing they let him know of the piles of unwanted rocks that he could come pick up. Walking that trail of rocks on Sunday, September 27, and talking with Tom Hendrix' widow was fitting worship for the day. 

    We had talked about whether we could "count" Alabama or not as a state visited, earning a place for a sticker on our state map, and had concluded we wouldn't because there were just a few short miles of it on the Natchez Parkway and we wouldn't be spending the night there. However after visiting the walls of stone to commemorate Te-lah-nay's journey we decided we had to count it!

Tom Hendrix book about his great-great grandmother, Te-lah-nay.

Some of the stone walls - pictures truly don't capture this wonder.

More of the walls and path between.

An "amphitheater" in the midst of Te-lah-nay's wall 

A nice stone creek crossing on the Rock Spring Trail, also in Alabama. 

We didn't spend much time in the state, but our short visit was inspiring.

    We crossed into Mississippi later on Sunday and enjoyed more historical stops along the way. We felt blessed to find accommodation for us at Jeff Busby Campground.

One of several mounds left by Indigenous people that we saw along the Trace 

and other places along our journey.

If you look you can see some of the mounds.

Part of the trail at Jeff Busby Campground.

My goal is to never walk less than five miles a day, and I tend to get grumpy if I fall short of that goal. On Sunday night, about 45 minutes before sundown, I thought I'd go for a short walk, but I probably wouldn't complete my five miles because I wasn't feeling very energetic, but a just a few minutes into the hike I was energized and completed the mile and a half I had to do to make it five for the day. When I got back to LesThora I told Rob, "If I ever get really old and decrepit, just put me on a trail and I'll be revived!" I was reminded of Nemo, a Guide Dog puppy my sister raised, but who was rejected from being a Guide Dog because of hip dysplasia and became a family pet, becoming my parents pet when my sister grew up and moved away. Once when Nemo was "old and decrepit" we were watching him at our house when my parents were on a vacation. He couldn't make it up the stairs without help and he barely moved around, but we were outside with him and a chicken was nearby. Nemo saw that chicken and he sprung to action, just like a young dog. Trails are to me like chickens were to Nemo!

A view from the high point at the Jeff Busby area. 

    Leaving the Natchez Trace Parkway on Monday, September 28, and entering civilization at Jackson, Mississippi was jarring to say the least. We tried to find a place that could do an oil change on 11 foot high LesThora - have had no problems previously - but had no luck this time. It's just barely ready for an oil change, so we have plenty of other places to look for one. Our stopping place for the night was the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant. Cracker Barrels are very hospitable to RVs spending the night, and this was our first one, but as Rob commented, the highway traffic nearby was quite a change from our previous two quiet nights. We had an enjoyable visit with Alex over dinner and a couple of board games - he skunked us at Rummikub. Alex is well paid by FEMA, including an apartment, per diem and a rental car. With just himself to take care of, he's saving lots of what he earns. Alex is the grandson I hiked the Tahoe Rim Trail with 4 years ago, and he'd like to hike more thru trails. He has the money to take off and do that as long as he stays unattached. I can't believe it, but I didn't take any pictures while visiting with Alex!

    Yesterday we crossed the Mississippi River to enter Arkansas and found a beautiful Army Corps of Engineering campground, Willow Beach Campground, near Little Rock Arkansas. The campground feels like it's on a peninsula, but it's really a strip of land between Willow Beach Lake and David T. Terry Lake, the latter of which looks to be a wide spot on the Arkansas River. 

Crossing the Mississippi River into Arkansas

Curious water growing trees - wonder how they get started

Immediately adjacent to our campsite at Willow Beach Campground

Another discovery on our journey - 

part of the water route of the infamous Trail of Tears on the Arkansas River

A swan at sunset on David D Terry Lake, part of the Arkansas River. There are many swans here and some egrets and a blue heron.

Moonrise over Willow Beach Lake, nest to the Arkansas River

Straus being playful at bedtime

Elsie says, "Where's breakfast?"

Don't worry, we fed them!