Land Between the Lakes
by Reuben and Missie ~ November 29th, 2009. Filed under: Hiking, Land Between the Lakes, North/South Trail.
- Violet and Chippers ready to go!
We spent our Thanksgiving holiday hiking the North South Trail at Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area in Kentucky/Tennessee. This is a 60 mile trail that goes from the North Welcome Station to the South Welcome station in the recreation area.
This is one of the many bridges that we had the opportunity to cross, this is one of the very stable ones. They varied greatly in construction strength, like this one that was rated to five tons to others that bounced up and down as we walked across.
We started on Wednesday with the intention of hiking about 15 miles. We were having a lovely day of walking and we took a lunch break at the Moss Creek Day Use Area.
We had a meal of open face bagel sammiches with cheese and bologna.
We had a very nice view of the Kentucky Lake.
We had the intention of spending our first night at the Sugar Jack Spring shelter, but as we walked until after it was dark, we somehow missed the side trail to the spring and shelter. We continued on until we found a suitable campsite that was near water and flat. It turned out to be a very nice campsite and we managed to hike over 18 miles our first day out.
The next day we continued our hike and to keep us fueled up, we must take several breaks. This is one where the dogs were tell us, ya know, I could do this all the time.
We ended up hiking about 18 miles the second day as well. We were feeling pretty sore and tired and were thinking about home so the 3rd day we decided we would try to do the remaining 25 so we could go home. Well, it worked out that our feet weren’t feeling that and we decided to stick with the original plan of 15 on day three. We camped near an old fire tower that was quite high. The dogs only made it part of the way up before they decided that was enough.
We went on to finish the remaining 11 miles or so on Saturday and were extremely grateful to be able to sit down for a while. All in all it was a good time had by all including Chippers who got to experience his first long distance trekking.
