Author Archives: Jill and Bud

Saturday afternoon we picked up all our outside stuff because storms were coming through overnight. I expected Sunday to be a rainy, drizzly day. But Sunday morning the rain stopped. Bud asked if I would like him to drop Matey and me off to walk the Cumberland River Trail. I looked that up and found a trailhead that would give us a four mile walk on a paved trail, so we went there and unloaded the stroller and Bud left to go shopping.

This is a rails to trails project and this part was paved, so it was perfect for the stroller. About three-quarters of a mile along we came to this converted trestle.

The bridge crossed Sycamore Creek as it widened near where it flowed into the Cumberland River. By then the clouds had mostly cleared and it was a perfect walking day; sunny, in the low sixties with a mild breeze.

Being a converted railway the trail was mostly level and straight, but it was still pretty as it tunneled through the trees.

The trail hugged the side of the river valley, so there were some pretty rock cliffs here and there.

A second bridge…

gave nice views of a branch of the creek (that tree is a sycamore, one of many in the area).

There were benches along the way, including this lovely stone memorial.

About halfway along this section of the trail was the Turkey Junction Native Gardens and Comfort Station.

This swing was the project of an Eagle Scout,

positioned to take advantage of one of the few openings in the trees lining the trail.

There were some picnic tables,

and signs for trees…

and other perennials.

Bud walked up and joined us for the last half mile or so, which was nice because Matey finally wanted to walk. So I took Matey…

and Bud brought the stroller.

This turned out to be a much nicer day than I expected.

My original plan was to spend two weekends in Nashville, so a twelve day stay. I was looking for a site with full hook-ups, and RV Parky, the app I use for planning, had Harpeth River Bridge listed with full hook-ups.

So I went to the recreation.gov website and based on this photo of a spacious site right on the river, chose site 14.

When we pulled in, we thought site 14 was occupied, as there was a C-class Motorhome in the driveway. It turns out that this site has a shared driveway, not as spacious as I thought. And there was no sewer hook- up. How did I get that wrong? I checked RV Parky and sure enough, they listed sewer. I sent them an edit.

Then I went back and checked the recreation.gov site. Under Full Hookup it says 50, which would make you think it has full hookups with 50 amp electric. So it wasn’t me, but now we were here without sewer. But happily I had cut out one weekend to be in Memphis and we are only here for 8 days, and not having a sewer hookup is easily manageable.

It does have the river, seen here from my seat under our awning.

And it does have the bridge.

And although there’s not a lot of room for walking Matey I was able to get him both a grooming appointment and a vet appointment in the area (both of those scheduled months ago).

I even took the time to put up my Halloween decorations. I’ve been carrying them around for four years and decided I should either put them up or get rid of them.

I took Matey down to a nearby boat ramp at the confluence of the Harpeth and Cumberland Rivers. It was a pretty spot but there wasn’t really anywhere to walk there either.

There is a nearby disc golf course, so Matey has gotten some exercise while we played.

We drove over to the Cheatham Lock and Dam on the Cumberland River and watched this tug coming out of the lock…

pushing its string of barges. There were fifteen barges in the group, three wide and five long.

I tried to get a photo of the whole array, but it hardly fit in the frame!

Down river we saw another tug with 9 barges…

and four pleasure boats waiting to lock through.

We were surprised that they had the pleasure boats come up…

and cut in front of the tug and barges. They locked them through first. Having traversed the Welland Canal twice with pleasure boats we know that would never happen there. Commercial traffic has precedence and you can wait for hours for your turn in the locks.

So despite this not being what we expected, we are enjoying the area, and the turtles…

and the birds.

Harpeth River Bridge Campgound has turned out to be fine.

While I went down to Memphis Bud and Matey stayed at Fort Pillow State Historic Park about an hour and a half north. Our site turned out to be pretty nice. There is no one on the far side of our camper giving us quite a bit of privacy.

The campground loop was long enough to give Matey a decent walk.

On Sunday, when I got back, we drove up to explore the historic fort. Like at Columbus-Belmont there seems to be nothing left but earthworks. These were less obvious and were now pretty indistinguishable from the woods.

There were some nice trees, maybe growing here since not long after the Civil War.

There was an overlook with an interesting view. In the far distance on the left you can just catch a glimpse of the Mississippi River. A bit closer on the right you might think that is also the river.

But it’s not anymore. It’s called The Chute and it is an oxbow lake now cut off from the river. You’ll notice the state line between Tennessee and Arkansas follows what was the river. And Fort Pillow now guards this oxbow lake, and not the Mississippi at all.

Before we left on Monday Matey and I took a walk on the Chickasaw Bluff Trail.

We walked as far as the primitive campsite which was on a bluff,

and had a partially obscured view of a valley, but I couldn’t find either the river or the lake.

While we were a bit disappointed with the fort, this was a nice park and a very nice campground.

As usual I did not get many pictures of this past weekend. For one thing, it’s not easy to capture the whole scene with an iPhone. This is the Lake Hamilton band in preliminary competition, close to the end of their show.

I met Jamie and Sean in the parking lot just before 11AM. We walked over to where the band was…

and Jamie helped with the props. The show is called The Visionary and is themed on Leonardo DaVinci. The props include screens with drawings of four of his inventions and life sized models of them.

Sean and I went to the stands and Jamie stayed with the band to help them get all those props into the stadium and onto the field. I think they only get three or four minutes to move everything in place, which includes time to set up amplifiers and microphones.

This is close to the beginning of the performance, Adler is on the right, holding his tenor saxophone.

In front, on the sidelines, is the pit, xylophones and symbols and other percussionists, as well as the electronics they use.

The show starts with the screens in front of the props and turned so the drawings show. Here the screens have been turned to solid blue and are back drops to the actual devices.

The band made finals and this is the only shot I got of their finals performance. I did manage to catch Adler actually playing.

Here are all the finals bands lined up for awards.

Lake Hamilton ended up in eighth place, third in their class. They were happy with that result and I was happy to share the weekend with Jamie, Sean and Adler.

Yesterday we crossed the Ohio River not far from its confluence with the Mississippi. This is not our original route. I had planned to stay two weeks near Nashville, hoping to meet Jamie at the airport and drive with her to watch Adler compete in Johnson City in eastern Tennessee. But after two years where they did compete there, the band is not going this year.

So instead we came to Columbus-Belmont State Park on the Mississippi River in Kentucky. We are on our way south to a park north of Memphis and I will drive down and meet Jamie and Sean to watch Adler and the band compete in Memphis.

We had been here in November of 2022 and although this year I couldn’t get one of these sites with their river sunsets,

Matey and I can still walk the bluffs above the Mississippi.

The park is mostly the same as I remember it but I do see that erosion of these bluffs continues.

With all that vegetation you’d think these slopes would be protected. I guess not as you can see a small gully working its way back into the grassy bluff.

Otherwise the place is as pretty as I remember.

Everything looks in great shape. They were finishing up some grooming this morning.

Turns out this weekend there is going to be a civil war reenactment here.

The whole park is full of entrenchments, dug by the Confederates but only held by them for a year.

They were put here to guard against Northern invasion down the Mississippi, but when Kentucky fell to the Union this position was taken over by the North to aid in that invasion.

I wonder what battle they will reenact, as no battles were fought here.

As for us, we’re just here for one day and I needed to get wash done. There are two washers and two dryers,

just steps from our camper. And Bud found an auto parts store 10 miles from here where he got a replacement taillight bulb.

Wash done, repairs done, and lovely places to walk; we’re all set.

I started noticing a lot of reservation tags all ending on October 19th. Some were on empty sites.

In some sites folks had brought in a trailer and set it up and then left.

I also saw quite a few sites with Halloween decorations.

Not only did these folks have a mask for their trailer, they also had a lot of camp chairs and a huge pile of wood. They were getting ready for something.

And I think they rented the site next door to them, too.

These folks look like they might have been waiting for a looonng time.

I was seeing more and

more decorations.

The guy from this site was out adding to his decorations so I asked him if there was a contest or something. He said there was a tradition for folks from the area to come and camp, then Saturday evening, the 18th, all the kids would go trick or treating.

Obviously people get really into it. I asked the lady with this display if I could take a picture. She invited Matey and me to walk through.

There were several motion activated figures.

I thought Matey would be frightened, but he wasn’t.

I guess he can smell that they’re not alive so he wasn’t worried…

no matter how big they were.

I talked to the park host about it. She said people come from all over to trick and treat here. Last year there were over 800 people and they parked all the way around the lake, so some had to walk a mile to the campground. One of the campers told her he’d bought $300 worth of candy for this year.

So although it sounds like spooky Halloween fun for the kids it would be a nightmare for us and I’m glad we moved on today. I was happy with my preview minus the 800 trick or treaters.

After the tranquility of Johnson-Sauk Trail we were dismayed Saturday to arrive at Red Hills State Park and find it buzzing with children. Children on bikes, scooters and skateboards were zipping around the campground roads. Not only that, but the reservation I had called in had not gotten passed to the campground hosts, so someone was in our spot.

After some time and discussion we took a site with 30 amp electric and no water or sewer with the hope that there might be some open sky for Starlink. We filled our water tank and settled in. The patch of sky over the camper wasn’t getting us connected to Starlink but we had the lake behind us so we decided to see if our longer, 150 foot, cable would reach the shore.

It just made it.

The trees at the edge of the water block the top of the reception area, but it hasn’t affected our service.

And by Sunday afternoon most people had left and we had the loop to ourselves, ahh.

The roads were now quiet.

There were no trail maps but after taking a sidewalk to the next road I could see that I could walk around the lake, so I decided to walk alone again.

This was not as pretty a road as the one around Johnson Lake at the last park.

We, the blue dot, are now getting towards southern Illinois,

and I have been happy to find Sassafras all over here. The last time I saw any was at Kopegaron Conservation Area in southern Ontario, which shows what a unique part of Canada that is!

Red Hills Lake is pretty,

but seems nutrient rich.

There was a sign here saying no swimming.

The algae at this nearby dock would be enough to keep me out of the water.

After all our travels up north with sparkling clean water this pea green soup is a bit shocking.

There are no trails here at the campground and my walk around the lake was on roads, some through roads with some traffic.

Still there are some short paths,

and lovely treed areas.

And our campsite, now that we are alone, is very, very nice.

Our times with friends ended as we drove south along the Iowa shore of the Mississippi River on the first of October. The first part of our journey was on relatively back roads through picturesque river towns.

Just under five hours later we were at Johnson-Sauk Trail State Recreation Area in Illinois, 150 miles west and a bit south of Chicago.

We have plenty of room here and the view from my tent is lovely. Unfortunately, there are biting gnats so tiny they can get through the mesh and worse, the temperatures have been in the mid 80’s, so Matey and I only spent one morning enjoying this view.

We have done some morning and evening walks. This inviting trail…

leads to Johnson Lake.

There’s a picnic area there and a path back to another part of the campground.

We came across these deer.

There’s a pine planting in that area; kind of pretty but also sterile. There are tent and RV camping spots through it and that’s a good use.

There are also Osage orange trees here.

I love these gnarly trees that look like they’re dropping tennis balls all over the ground.

The park is the home of the Ryan Round Barn. It was built in the early 1900’s but unfortunately is only available for tours by appointment.

Yesterday afternoon I took a walk by myself around the lake. It was too hot for Matey and Bud’s back was hurting. It was Bud’s birthday and I teased him that the nicest thing I could do for him was to leave him alone for the day. Anyway, it’s a bit under three miles around the lake. This is looking back at the picnic area where Matey and I walked the first evening.

A lot of the walk was along the one-way road that circles the lake. Some of the biggest walnut trees I’ve seen towered over the road. Nuts were dropping with a frequency that made me wonder if I might get hit in the head with one.

I passed some nice picnic areas…

and was able to walk along the lake for a bit.

I cut through on the Ojibwa Trail. It’s marked moderate,

but the whole trail was like this. It’s hard to judge a trail by its posted difficulty, I’ve been on trails marked moderate that were pretty challenging, but this was not.

I then took the Piankashaw Trail…

that led up to and along the dam that makes the lake.

There are nice views at this end of the lake…

as well as a kayak launch and fishing dock.

This is off season camping and through the week parks are pretty empty. You can just see our trailer in the distance, the only campers at our end of this big loop. Although it’s hard to leave friends we both love the new sights and the solitude we find on the road.

After not seeing anyone we know for four months the last couple of weeks have been a happy change. After leaving Land O’ Lakes on Monday we drove to the Mississippi River near Brownsville, MN and camped for a couple of days with our friends Jim and Margaret and their dog, Bo.

Jim and Margaret are always up for an adventure and they were willing to rent a camper van and come stay by us at Wildcat Park, Landing and Campground.

We left the colors of northern Wisconsin…

for the bluffs of the upper Mississippi where everything is still green.

Our campsites were right on the Mississippi and we enjoyed the sunrises over the water…

and seeing the boats go by.

We made the most of our brief time together, sharing a couple of meals and playing some cards in the evenings. On our one day we took a drive south along the river to this old bridge at Lansing, Iowa,

where we crossed the river and its many islands…

into Wisconsin.

We drove back north along the east side of the river to Old Settler’s Overlook.

There were some old paved trails we took.

There were several overlooks, but this was the highest and my favorite.

Yes, we were all there.

There was just a bit of haze, but the view was still great.

We drove 44 miles and could see our campground across the river.

There were some old quarries there that were pretty. That high point was somewhere up beyond this quarry wall.

Besides being pretty this quarry made a safe place to let the dogs run. It was like a box canyon with the opening at the road in where we parked the truck. No one else was there when we got back from the overlook paths so the dogs had a romp off leash. Admittedly, Bo did a lot more romping than Matey.

From there we continued north along the river to LaCrosse, WI where we had a nice lunch at Huck Finn’s on the Water. It was a bit hot (!) but we ate out on their dog friendly deck. Then we crossed back on I-90 and stopped at Lock and Dam Number 7. But nothing was coming through the lock…

so after a couple of quick photos we left and went back to camp.

Our time together was too brief, but great fun.

We’ve been wanting to visit our friends, Jane and Rob Speer, at their lake house in northern Wisconsin for a while. So this year we booked two weeks at nearby Borderline RV Park.

The name Borderline is because it’s on the border of Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan,

and not because it’s kind of borderline pretty, with trees and some space, but also a dumpster directly in my view from the only place I can put my tent.

But it’s only 12 miles from the Lake House…

and Jane and Rob.

The view there was close to perfect, especially when the sun chose to peek out.

The house sits on Forest Lake…

which we explored in their fishing boat. Our first ride was fairly short,

as it was pretty cool and cloudy.

We’ve been having a great time exploring the area with them. On our first walk they took us to this treehouse in the neighborhood. The man who built it is happy to have hikers come by. We noticed the treehouse even had electricity going to it.

We’ve been doing a lot of walking, and Jane and Rob were with Matey and me for an important milestone which we commemorated with this selfie.

Matey and I have reached 15,000 recorded miles walked since I got him almost 11 years ago!

We didn’t stop there, while Rob and Bud golfed Jane and I took Matey and the stroller for a walk on a bike trail off their road.

It was a lovely trail.

The sun came out a bit, too.

We walked to some towering hemlocks and back.

Matey sometimes rode and sometimes walked and we went four miles altogether.

We went back out in the boat on another almost sunny day.

Jane and I just wanted a bit of a ride,

but while Rob stopped the boat for a few minutes on the still lake,

Bud caught this rock bass.

The guys dropped us off and we did another three mile stroller walk. They went back out fishing. Rob caught a largemouth bass and Bud caught this 20 inch northern pike. All the fishes went back in the water and we had steak for dinner.

We finally had a sunny day and went just north into Michigan and the Sylvania Wilderness Recreation Area. We went to hike along Clark Lake. This is the beach there.

A very nice couple from Indiana took this picture for us.

We hiked along the east side of the lake so the afternoon sun would shine through from the lake.

I tried to capture the party, but of course Bud stepped behind a hanging branch.

There were some nice views of the lake.

We hiked across this little creek…

up to another place where I could get a shot of the lake.

Then we all came…

back across the creek…

and back along the trail…

where the sun made the trees glow.

It was cool, but still, and very pretty.

With over thirty lakes around, this is a beautiful area, and we have loved being here with good friends.