July 14 I left Richmond yesterday and after a drive through the mountains arrived here at Cumberland Mountain State Park. The GPS figured I would get here by 3pm but I figured it would be more like four. I got here at 5pm. This is the first state park and the first campsite. There is nothing really remarkable about this campground but that’s ok . It is only a stopping over point on my way to Shiloh which is still another four hours away. Having practiced in my backyard I was able to get the tent up without incident. I expect I will probably get faster at it in the days ahead. Everything feels damp. The chair I brought still has the sand in it from the trip to Hilton Head the family made last month.
July 15 Spent last light at Pickwick Landing. No landing around. Drove yesterday through all kinds of back roads to get to Shiloh. Arrived there around 2pm and toured the battlefield for about three hours. There is too much about that experience to put in this log. Having read about it and talked about it, actually seeing this battlefield was more than just an intellectual experience. It was an emotional one. I am going back today for more sign reading, monument gazing and and study. Had a good internet connection here at Pickwick but man the cicadas were noisy last night. I got a tip from the young ranger here. Reelfoot Lake is apparently a great campsite and since it won’t be that far from Fort Pillow I think I might just check it out. God it seems to take me a long time to break camp. I need to get faster at that.
July 16 After a full day day at Shiloh I returned to Pickwick Landing State Park. That was not the plan this morning. I was going to find a campsite four miles from the battlefield. Well I found it all right. A wide open field with wooden stumps to indicate a campsite. No one was camped there. No one was walking around there. No one was in the office there even though the door was open. It was a creepy looking place. A campground from the Twilight Zone. Thank goodness Pickwick was only fourteen miles away and I knew from the previous nights stay that there were plenty of available campsites. I still don’t want to write about Shiloh in this log but I will mention the signage. It was cool. Blue signs for Grant, Read signs for the Confederates and Yellow signs for Don Carlos Buell ( I wonder if that color was chosen for it symbolic implications). Square in shape they were for the first day of the battle April 6, 1862 and oval for the second. Triangular markers were used to indicate the union camps which were an important part of the story since many of them were over run on the first day of fighting. All of these signs made it very easy to see what was going on on those two terrible days.
I set up camp on a different site not too far from where I had stayed the night before. No sooner had I finished dinner when I heard the sound of distant thunder. As I put the rain fly on my tent a fellow drove up in his truck and told ne that the approaching storm was classified as serious with lightening and winds of 45 to 50 mph. I loaded everything but the tent and the sleeping equipment therein into the truck and when the winds began wiping the pines around I joined my equipment. It was hot in the truck. I turned the engine over a couple of times to get the air condition to cool things down about but it felt like hours before the winds died down and the rain became a steady straight downpour. I made my way to the tent. The lightening continued to light up the inside of the tent for hours after that. This morning I awoke to a fresh round of thunder and lightening and rain which is still in progress as I write in this journal from my tent. I realized last night, as the lightening was crashing around last night that on the night of April 6, 1862 a tremendous thunderstorm like the one I was experiencing took place. While I was annoyed by it all, lying on my air mattress inside a dry tent I was reminded of all the wounded solders that would have been lying in the mud that soaked to the skin on what was for many their last night on earth. It has been said that on that night when the lightening flashed soldiers could see hogs feeding on the dead from the battle.
Nothing stops critters. I thought I heard another noise last night beside the thunder, pelting rain and the cicadas. This morning I found the trash from last night dinner scattered about. The ground yielded no tracks which allows my imagination to conjure a bear or a coyote. It probably was a raccoon or even more anti-climatic some neighborhood dog on the loose.
I went to breakfast at an Exxon station. The place was a combination convinence store, gift shop, fishing supply center and fast food restaurant. In the “gift shop” area of the store was the store T shirt on which there was a peace sign and the words “ Peace, Love and Fun in Pickwick”. Next to the T-shirts were various items emblazoned with the confederate flag and slogans like “Put your Heart in Dixie or get Your Ass Out”. A curious combination of sentiment which I guess shows nothing more than the diversity of the marketplace. Ok the rain is starting to let up. Time to crawl out from under cover , assess the situation and make plans. I hope to camp tonight at Fort Pillow, Maybe the weather is better in the northern part of the state.
July 17 Mother nature was in an evil mood yesterday. No sooner had I struck the tent then the rains came back in full force. Trying to get everything packed in the rain without it all getting soaked became a challenge and a frustration. I got it all done but ironically I think I lost my towel in the process. I headed north hoping to get to sunlight which I did. The journey from Pickett to Pillow took me down some back country roads displaying rural Tennessee. I stopped for lunch in a small town hoping to catch some of the flavor of a rural community. Unfortunately the place was very bland and the clientele was limited to a few men in bill hats taking their lunch break from work.
As I got closer to Ft Pillow I began to notice a lot of debris on the road and in a couple of places it was obvious that crews had recently cleared a tree that had fallen in the road. this area must have gotten the brunt of the storm I experienced at Pickwick. The campsite was empty when I arrived and remained so all night. When I arrived I picked a site and spread everything out to dry. Then while it dried I went to find the fort. Ft. Pillow is not a national park but a state park and the set up for touring the battlefield is no were near as nice. In fact the location of the fort itself was a bit of a mystery. I tried to follow the map I was given at the museum but the path was muddy and nasty and without clear markings. I fell on some slippery wooden steps and this morning my shoulder is acting like I did something to my rotor cuff. I returned to the campsite and set up for the night. Just before retiring I threw out the trash. No sooner had I crawled into my sleeping bag than I heard the lid of the trash can hit the ground. Bear! I thought and reached for the only weapon I had to defend myself against such a beast; my car keys with a button on it that would make the truck’s horn go off. My hope was that the noise would scare the animal away or at least send a signal that would bring the ranger. There was no bear. I just didn’t put the lid on tight enough. Speaking of the ranger he was the first one I have encountered to carry a side arm.
This morning is beautiful and with no one in the camp but me, very peaceful. It is clear and cool which is a temporary relief from the heat which I am sure will return when the sun gets higher in the sky. I will attempt again to see the fort. This time I’ll seek the advice of someone, maybe that pistol toting ranger.
July 18 It is a glorious morning and I am camped in Reelfoot Lake State Park. The lake that is the central attraction of this park was created by an earthquake that shook this area in 1812. Story has it that the Mississippi River which is right close by flowed backwards and filled this hole created by the quake.
I left Fort Pillow yesterday afternoon after locating the fort thanks to a maintenance man I befriended in the camp. He told me of a maintenance road he used to get to the fort that was easy to follow and a much shorter journey than the one on the map that made no sense. Battlefields maintained by states are never as good as those supported by the federal government, but the fort had been reconstructed well and I could get a feel for what happened there in April of 1864 when Nathan Beford Forrest recaptured the fort from a union garrison of black soldiers most of whom were killed in what has been called a massacre. Through the trees I could get a glimpse of the Mississippi River to which African-American troops tried to fee when the fort was overrun. If the embankment was as steep then as it is now that effort was probably as dangerous as the confederate soldiers.
The drive to ReelFoot was uneventful. Lots of farmland and small towns. I have used a map only to get a general sense of where I am going but relied on the GPS to get me there. It has not failed yet and it does take me off the beaten path. At least in this part of Tennessee. While yesterdays campground was empty except for me, a ranger and a maintenance guy, this campground is well populated with trailers, campers, RVs and a scattering of fellow tent people. I will stay here today and leave tomorrow morning using the time to regroup, resupply and nail down some of the details of the easterly trip back to Richmond. I am the furthest west I will be on this trip right now. From here the back leg of the journey begins. So it is and R & R day that will include some fishing.
When I started writing this morning I was the only one up. But now the campground is beginning to stir. First out are the older men who emerge from their aluminum abodes to walk their little dogs. I guess if Cindy and the dogs were with me that would be how I would start my day.
Thoughts and Observations on Camping
This is the end of the first week of camping. What I have observed about camping will now be recorded. There is always stuff that has to get done. It is a constant process of packing and unpacking, of zipping and unzipping. Researchers say that one common factor about places in the world where people live the longest is that the inhabitants of those places have to constantly be doing things to survive. They theorize that this has something to do with longevity. Perhaps I’ll last longer if I just keep on camping.
There are dos and don’t to record. Don’t stand in a rainstorm yelling at God to knock it off in the only pair of blue jeans you brought on the trip. They take forever to dry! Don’t camp on a site with pea gravel. The little pebbles get into your tent poles and turn a ten minute job of erecting the tent into an hour long ordeal involving needle nose pliers and a lot of profanity. Don’t leave your cooler out in the rain. It fills up with water and melts all your ice. Don’t spray Cutters on yourself while holding a drink in your hand.
Selecting a campsite can be more complicated than I thought. Close to the bathroom is good, but too close means that everyone will be walking through your back yard on their way to the john. Under trees is ok as long as you don’t see large dead branches overhead. Do you pitch close to the electrical outlet or where the ground is most level? Most of the time you can’t have both. If you find an ideal site and no one else is around you can rest assured that (with the exception of Ft. Pillow) there will be people around you by the end of the day. If yours is a good site the ones around it are going to hold similar attractions.
This is the first time in years I have camped like this. The last time was with Eddie and his buddies which was hardly the same at all. Practices from my boy scout days and trips with my family as a kid came back. Like locking up food at night to keep animals from being attracted into your camp. Keeping the tent zipped up and muddy shoes out of it.
I changed time zones when I crossed the state but never reset my watch or the truck clock. While the cell phone and GPS automatically adjusted for the change, I saw no point. (which explains why the GPS always saw my arrival time an hour earlier than I did). The only time I had to concern myself with was sunset, and decisions were all made based on the amount of daylight left in a given day.
Of course this is not like the camping I did as a kid. I am traveling with a cell phone which means I can call home anytime I want. I have a laptop with Internet access that takes the guesswork out of weather forecasting. Some sites have both water and electric hookup. Ft Pillow was the exception to this and was classified as a “primitive” campground. But even it had a bath house with showers and hot water.
July 19 As planned the yesterday was spent here at Reelfoot. I did get out to see the Mississippi River which is fast and wide at this point. I am in the northwestern most corner of the state and accidentally traveled into Kentucky for about ten miles when I took a wrong turn. I fished along the banks of the Reelfoot and tied into a catfish from the Jurassic Age. This guy was a monster but he got fouled into something in the water and I had to cut him loose. Sure which I could have brought him up at least to get a picture. Camping here has had it’s pluses and minus. On the plus side I have seen dawns and sunsets over the lake, the first of either I have actually seen since the view of these was obstructed in other campsites by a wall of trees. This morning’s dawn had the added beauty of two low flying cranes gliding over the top of the lake right in front of me. The tent has been free of it’s rain fly for the past two nights leaving the top open. I have been able to lay on my air mattresses and look up into a sky full of stars. It is a nice way to got to sleep.
On the minus side there are people too close to me. Yesterday two parties came into the campground and selected the sites to my left and right. Mick Jaggers song “Neighbors” ran through my head last night as I tried to sleep while people around me were opening and closing trailer doors and talking by their campfires late into the night. The only sound I heard at Ft. Pillow besides the trash can lid was the cicadas and the bugs hitting the side of my tent. Mosquitoes here have been the worse yet and although I soaked myself in Cutters the little buggers found places and for the first time on this trip I have itchies.
The dog walkers are beginning to appear. It is time for me to get some breakfast, break camp and hit the road to Fort Donelson.
July 20 This morning I am in a national park. The park is called The Land Between the Lakes and the campground is called Piney. I am in the Chestnut loop on site 23 which is the coolest site where I have yet to pitch my tent. It is right on the lake formed by the damming of the Cumberland River and I can walk ten paces from my tent and cast my fishing line. This I have been doing, catching some good size brim and small mouth bass. They are taking to top water lures which is good because my collection of night crawlers expired on the drive over here. I keep wanting to take more pictures of this place.
Yesterday I drove from ReelFoot Lake to the Fort Donelson Battlefield park. There I started with the driving tour of the battlefield. It was divided by a highway which made the touring a bit awkward but I was able to see both the left and right flanks of the confederate defenses, where the attempted breakout took place and the hotel in which Grant accepted Simon Buckner ‘s surrender unconditionally. It was a lovely setting for a surrender; up on a hill overlooking the Cumberland River. My coup de grace was finding a historical marker outside the park that indicated that I was within three hundred feet of where Nathan Bedford Forest made his escape with 700 men the night before the surrender. This was the most beautiful of the battlefields I have seen. On the driving tour the road opened up at one point on top of a bluff with a sweeping panorama of the river. Cannons had been placed where the confederate batteries had been guarding the river from yankee invaders. I could stand at the place where confederate artillery men would have been when Admiral Footers fleet of ironclads approached the fort. At a picnic spot in that same area i encountered a biker while having my lunch who told me about the Land Between the Lakes and old iron furnaces from the 1850’s whose ruins were still visible. It was that tip that led me to this park. I did find the old iron furnaces which could easily pass for the ruins of some ancient South American indian temple.
The weather was good all day and when I set up my camp I left the rain fly off. Coming back from getting some dinner it began to rain and I was struck with a panicky feeling that all my sleeping equipment would get soaked. But the rain lasted only a few minutes and there was enough tree cover to keep things dry. Never trust a sunny day to stay sunny.
This camp is inhabited almost entirely by RVs some so monstrous in size that I am amazed that they can actually be driven. One is occupied by a fellow named George and his wife who have parked their colossal castle-on-wheels in a site 24 and move about in a jeep they towed along. Their RV holds 68 gallons of gasoline and burns it at a rate of 7 miles to the gallon. They are keen on taking my campsite when I leave and plan to follow me out of the camp so they can sign up for it the minute I check out. George has given me a tip on yet another campsite. This one is further east and it is called Fall Creek Falls. Checking the map I find it is in a perfect location for that part of my trip that involves Dayton, the home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial.
It is very cool this morning. The temperature got into the lower 50s last night a nd i am wearing a sweatshirt I threw in the truck at the last moment thinking “who needs a sweatshirt in July?” It would be uncomfortable right now without it. Instead this one is delightful and as I watch the sun wake up the lake I am thinking I will delay my departure, maybe do some laundry and keep George and his wife in a state of quiet consternation over when I will release my spot. I am going to refill my coffee cup and do so more fishing in my backyard.
July 21 I am in the Cedars of Lebanon campground this morning. Nothing special about this campground unless you are really into cedars. I will be here two nights, not because of the campground but because of its’ proximity to historical sights. I arrived here yesterday after driving through Nashville traffic , too late to do anything more than set up camp. The Battle of Stones Mountain is outside Murfressboro some twenty miles away from here. Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage is some 35 miles east of here. Both are on my list of places to see today. Both will take some time to get through.
I left the land Between the Lakes yesterday afternoon after doing laundry and catching fish. My fish count including the catfish at Reel Foot is now up to four, not bad considering that fishing was not the main purpose of the trip. George followed me out of the camp to register for my campsite. His wife stayed behind to start the maneuvers required to get their RV into position for the takeover.
I am now between Nashville and Knoxville. Getting back on route 40 for the first time since I departed from it on my way to Shiloh felt like I had returned from some sorjoun to the far west and reminded me that I am heading east. This is the return -to -Richmond phase. But it’s not over yet. There is still plenty of places to go and things to see.
July 22 Rain delay. Not a thunderstorm but a steady downpour greeted me this morning. I decided to hell with soaking in the rain again so I am sitting in a Shoney’s enjoying the breakfast bar. This is not really wilderness camping when you have a Shoney’s less than ten miles from your tent. Fortunately I had Internet access last night so I knew this rain could come. Very little was unpacked from the truck last night. The tent is all zipped up and the sleeping equipment inside dry. If the rain lets up for just a few minutes when I get back to camp I will apply my “wet tent” procedure and will be good to go.
Yesterday morning was spent at the Battle of Stones Mountain. I got a good understanding of this battle which I have yet to give the kind of focus i have given to such battles as Shiloh, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. There were several knowledgeable rangers about to questions and a small flock of wild turkeys who foraged about as if humans were none of their concern. Unfortunately like Cold Harbor the park has very little of the land on which the battle was fought and the tour was cut up with highways and buildings. Stones River is the last of the battlefields on my agenda for this trip. Any more civil war encounters will be by accident.
After Stones River I cut through Nashville to the Hermitage, home of Andrew Jackson. Controversial guy that he was, Jackson was no slacker and his mansion showed his passion for the good life. It really wasn’t an hermitage for Jackson. Because of his government duties, he was rarely there and when he was he was constantly entertaining guests. But after seeing that house and walking those grounds I am convinced that he was not a common man. He was part of a new breed of aristocracy of the time; the western slave owning planter. And like all neuvo wealth his house was an imitation of plantations from eastern states like Virginia.
Today I will continue east and plan to see if George was right.
July 23 Fall Creek Falls is quite the park. The park is in the mountains. My ears were popping from the altitude as I drove to this location. It’s main attraction is a waterfall that plunges down the side of a cliff 250 feet into a lagoon. All around are the majestic mountains which for some reason look more resplendent when I look at them from the east than the west. The park has a golf course (at which the only point for cell phone access is located), a hotel and conference complex and a marina all on a large man made lake. Deer are here in abundance and make their presence known feeding along the side of the road. Everyone drives very slowly in this park.
The rain returned in the evening but didn’t last long. Shortly after it stopped I heard a car pull up behind my campsite and looking out of my tent window I saw flashlights moving about and voices. Late arrivers, a family of four, were trying to set up their camp in the dark with flashlights. I lit my lantern and took it to them so they could see what they were doing. I figured they would be set up in 15 to 20 minutes but when an hour went by and my lantern had still not been returned I went to investigate. They had two tents. One was up but the other lay spread out on the ground. They had borrowed it from a friend and had no clue how to set it up. And neither did I. Nor did I have any inclination to try. When they finally gave up and gave me back my lantern it had stuff burned on it and the mantle was broken. So much for being a good Samaritan. I have enough fuel to cook coffee but will have to get more now.
July 24 I am in the most crowded campground I have been in on this trip. In fact after I arrived the “Campground Full” sign was hung out. My little tent is surrounded this morning by two trailers, an RV and another tent. An extended family of cousins and uncles and aunts from Florida occupy the space around me and have been most gracious about losing the extra picnic table they had until I appeared. I didn’t arrive that late. In fact there was still four more hours of daylight when I reached Roan Mountain, my home for about sixteen hours.
I went from the bad neighbors of Fall Creek Falls to the good neighbors of Roan Mountain. Not only did they make room for me by putting all their stuff on that side of the trailers furthest from me, but I was treated to a dinner of a slow cooked pork stew. It not only was delicious it meant an evening of no dinner preparations or clean up. I was free to explore the park . I returned before nightfall, replaced the broken mantle on my poor abused lantern, lit it up and settled down to read a little John Stienbeck.
It was the end of a day that had begun in rain. I am now accustom to breaking camp in the rain. In fact I have what I call the “rain procedure”. It includes throwing the unfolded wet tent into the front part of the truck bed and heading somewhere dry for breakfast. It was a small diner with mediocre food. One of the patrons was an interesting looking fellow. He was a regular because the waitress served him his usual, one pancake. He was wearing a motorcycle helmet which he never took off his head. His face was clean shaven down to his neck and blow his chin was a full neck beard. He ate his one pancake quickly and left without paying. Perhaps he had an account.
Leaving the diner I drove to Dayton, where John Scopes went on trial for doing something he never really did; teach the the theory of evolution against Tennessee law. It was Dayton’s biggest publicity stunt, but that does not undercut the power of the fundamentalist christians in this part of the country. Clear evidence of that is in the front lawn of the courthouse. There a large statue honors the fundamentalist, four time presidential candidate and the states attorney in the case William Jennings Bryan. There is no statue to Clarence Darrow who in addition to defending Scopes had defended murderers and communists. The museum was in the basement of the courthouse where a man, very knowledgeable about the story of Dayton and it’s trial was ready to tell me all about it whether I wanted to listen or not. I could not go into the original courtroom because it is still used today and there was a murder trial in progress. As I left I went by the entrance to the Dayton College where professors with Harvard degrees teach the creation of man from the book of Genesis.
I drove north to the town of Greenville, home of our first impeached president, Andrew Johnson. What a difference in lifestyle between the two Andrews of Tennessee. Unlike Jackson mansion and the sprawling grounds of the Hermitage, Johnson’s home was a very modest small town abode. The dominant occupant of this house was Mrs. Johnson who rarely came out of her room because of Teburlocus. She had a spittoon in her room, not because she chewed tobacco but because the TB made her cough out blood. Johnson was a tailor whose success in politics was that of a populist, taking on the planter class. I see this man as more of the “common man’s” president than the owner of the Hermitage.
This is my last campsite in Tennessee. Tomorrow I move into Virginia to camp for a couple of days at Mount Rogers National Park. With the exception of Land Between the Lakes, all of my camps have been in Tennessee state parks. While each was different all maintained a standard I came to expect. All parks but Ft. Pillow had sites with electricity and running water. All had bath houses with showers and hot water. Most beautiful of the state parks? fall Creek falls. Thank you George. Strangest of course was Ft. Pillow.
I was never bothered by wildlife during this trip. in fact the only troublesome critters In encountered were those of my own species. but even then, many of them were friendly and at times helpful.
This trip through Tennessee went amazingly well. I can’t believe how well plans worked out and small and infrequent were the problems. I drove slow in Tennessee, rarely exceeding the speed limit by five miles. I was never in a rush to get anywhere. I set the GPS to the destination of the day and let it take me through rolling countryside, mountain passes, farmland and small towns. I went through large cities but never went in them. Seen the way I saw it, Tennessee is a pretty state.
Every now and then I would get a whiff of something familiar. A smell. A feeling in the air. Something that would take me back to when the family of my childhood would visit Chattanooga. iI would be reminded that there is more to my kinship with this state than it’s Civil War history and natural beauty. It is the state in which my father was raised and my sister Pat was educated. It is the namesake of a brother I had who lived just long enough to be named Tennessee before succumbing to his birth defects. It is a state created by the migration of people from my home state of Virginia and although it was heavily influenced by this migration it is still a unique and special place. I hope to return.