Old Stone Fort State Park, Manchester, TN June 14 - June 28, 2015

Sunday, June 14, 2015

We have camping reservations at Old Stone Fort State Park from Sunday until Thursday.  

We took our time getting on the road this morning and didn’t leave until about 10:30.  We took I-40 to exit 176, then 840 almost to Manchester.  We arrived before 3 p.m. and had no problems setting up the camper.

Bonnaroo is happening this weekend, and we figured that both the park and Manchester would be very crowded, but evidently the crowd stays confined to the Bonnaroo area.  The park was as quiet as could be, with a few empty spaces.

Dinner was grilled smoked sausages and grilled vegetables at the campsite.

After dinner, we set up a TV that I gave The Husband for his birthday.  To this point, we’ve had a rule against taking a TV on a camping trip, reasoning that we could stay home and watch TV.  But once when we took some grandchildren camping with us and it rained the whole time, we resorted to letting them watch movies on the laptop computer that we take with us for navigation.  It was,

“Move your head!  I can’t see!”

“He won’t move his head.”

Yada-yada.

So I got this TV, thinking we could hook the computer to it to play movies, and maybe, just maybe, get regular TV signals for weather reports, etc., when camping close to small towns.

On this trip, we are just outside Manchester, TN.  Chattanooga is not far in one direction, and Huntsville, AL is not far in the other, but the TV could find no signals.  Ah, well…who needs TV on a camping trip, anyway?

Monday, June 15, 2015

Today’s day trip was to Burgess Falls.  We’d seen pictures, and it looked like it was worth the 1.5 mile hike to see them.  There was a series of waterfalls, with overlook spots at each one. 

 

 

 

It wasn’t a bad hike; it was mildly strenuous only in one spot where there were steps to climb.  Mostly, the hike was just tedious.  There were lots of tree roots to trip clumsy folks like me, but we made it to the end of the trail without incident. 

 

 

 

At the end of the trail, we noticed a gravel road that led to the biggest of the falls.  It would have been a much easier walk to take that road, but we’d have missed seeing some of the smaller falls.

We also checked out Rock Island State Park on the way to Burgess Falls.  The campgrounds at Rock Island were very nice, but I’m not sure our 32-ft. camper would fit in many of the spots.

 

After leaving Burgess Falls, we grabbed a bite of lunch in McMinnville, then drove out to Cumberland Caverns, where Bluegrass Underground is filmed.  Despite the fact that I am completely creeped out by caves, I followed The Husband in on a tour.  The walk is about a mile and a half, and the tour takes about an hour and a half.  Inside the cave, the temperature was 56 degrees, which felt pretty wonderful after our hike in the heat at Burgess.  But it was still creepy to me.  In one place, there are 170 steps (according to the tour guide) that go over rock formations – up and down and back up and back down.  Some of the steps are steep, and this old lady with bad knees had a hard time navigating them.  Plus, I’m out of shape.  By the time we reached the end of the steps, I was wheezing like crazy.  At the end there was a “light show,” which, to be honest, was pretty lame, but it afforded me a few minutes to catch my breath for the return trek up and down those same 170 steps.  I was glad to get out of that cave!

 

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

 We decided to stick around the park today and investigate some of its features.  The “old stone fort” for which the park is named is one of those mysterious Native American structures that no one seems to understand.  It is a wall, a double row of stones filled with earth that goes almost all the way around a 50-acre plateau that sits between two rivers.  The professionals estimate that it was used until about 500 years ago.  The consensus seems to be that it was not an “ordinary” village, as they have not found archaeological evidence of everyday life.  Instead, they believe it to be a ceremonial center.  There is a breach between two mounds in the eastern wall where the rising sun is framed between the mounds on the summer solstice. 

 We walked the trail all the way around this thing, not a difficult hike except for the maze of tree roots and the sweat pouring off my head.  Parts of the trail snaked right along the edge of a cliff, where we could look down and see the rivers.  It was quite beautiful, with several waterfalls visible along the way.  After the hike, we toured the museum.  I was so hot and sweaty and the museum was so cool and wonderful that I did not really pay much attention to the artifacts.  Instead, I asked the attendant to “play the movie,” the type of informational film that always seems to be available in these museums, so that we could have a cool place to rest our feet for a few minutes.

Back at the camper, The Husband stretched out on the couch for a nap.  I traded my sweaty clothes for some dry ones and laid down across the bed to read.  Just as happens at home, the minute we dozed off, our cell phones started ringing.  I gave up on the idea of a nap and went outside to tease the squirrels with peanuts we’d brought along for road snacks.  Dinner was a thick steak on the grill with sautéed mushrooms and baked sweet potatoes, not bad fare for “roughing it.”

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

As soon as we cleaned up from breakfast this morning, we hopped in the truck and headed for the George Dickel distillery just a few miles from here.  Our GPS sent us down a road that dead-ended in a field, but we turned around and soon found our way.  We had toured Jack Daniel’s distillery years ago, and this tour was much the same.  At the end of the tour, we tasted four different types of whisky (that’s the way George Dickel spells it) and bought a couple of bottles to take home.

Our next destination was Bell Buckle, Tennessee, home of the Moon Pie Festival.  This year’s Moon Pie Festival will happen this weekend, but we will be gone home by then.  Bell Buckle is a tiny town, really just one main street lined with old buildings which house antique stores, gift shops, and restaurants.  We had lunch at the Bell Buckle Café then went around the corner for ice cream. 

Back in Manchester, we drove to the site of the Bonnaroo music festival.  It is on the edge of town, on a 700-acre farm.  Last weekend, nearly 100,000 people had descended on Manchester, many of whom camped out in the fields.  All that was left of the festival today were mounds of bagged garbage and a lot of equipment.  On our way back into town, we passed a winery where we bought a bottle of “Bonnaroo” wine and some cheese, which we sampled shortly after arriving back at our campsite.

Tomorrow, we head home, so we spent the afternoon “battening down the hatches” in preparation for pulling out in the morning.  Dinner was grilled bratwurst and chips.  As we were grilling the hot dogs, we heard thunder in the distance.  As I write this, the thunder continues and a soft rain is falling.  It should make for good sleeping if the storm doesn’t get scary.

All in all, this has been a fun trip.  We like the Old Stone Fort park campground.  The campsites are shady and nicely spaced apart.  It is one of the quieter campgrounds that we have visited, partly because the campground is arranged in “loops” with only about 10 campsites per loop.  Our only complaint is that there aren’t any sewer connections.  Today, the third full day of camping, after only two showers each and sparse use of water in the kitchen, our waste water tanks filled up, and we had to use the “turd wagon” to siphon off some of the gray water.  There is one weird thing about them:  the water hookups are on one side of the site, and the electric hookups are on the other.  We had to run the electric cord beneath the camper (which isn’t a big deal, since the cord was long enough) to reach the electric hookup. 

The other thing we like about this campground is that there are a lot of interesting parks and things to do in the area.  Nashville is about an hour north, and Chattanooga is about an hour southeast.  Huntsville is not much farther.  There are a number of state parks in the area.  Rock Island State Park is 30 minutes away in one direction, and Tims Ford State Park is a few minutes away in the opposite direction.  Fall Creek Falls is a little over an hour away.

And did I mention that this part of Tennessee is absolutely beautiful?  Rolling hills.  Waterfalls.  Lakes and rivers everywhere.  And it is glorious in the fall when the leaves turn colors.

Thursday, June 18, 2015 - Home Again

Yesterday at breakfast, we cooked enough bacon and sausage for today, and so this morning, all we did was nuke the meat, toast some bread, and wolf it down.  No sooner had we swallowed our last bites than we started readying the camper for the trip home.

Four and a half hours later, we pulled in our driveway and began unpacking the camper (which is not nearly as much fun as packing it).

Ahhhh, it's good to be home!