Montgomery Bell State Park

Day 3: Today was a short travel day (just 2

hours) from Cave City, Ky to Montgomery Bell State Park in Burns, Tn.  Check-In at the state park is at 4 p.m., but lucky for us no one was on our site so you can check-in at anytime. This state park uses Reserve America for reservations and has nice photos of each campsite along with a lot of the details about each campsite. We picked a site that we thought would fit our RV well but you never can really tell by a picture. When we got here we found that what appeared like a big open camping area was actually very compact and all of the roads and sites are lined with trees. It took a lot of finesse to wedge ourselves between the trees, campsite marker posts and railroad ties lining each site.  All of these obstacles made getting into this fairly large campsite a challenge. If they would just take out a few of the trees that are right on the edges of the road this place would be much nicer to get into. We got into our site just before it started to rain and began to plan our next move for the day and decided on a early dinner in Dickson in hopes the weather would clear up for exploration later.  There where a number of restaurants just a few miles away, and we decided to play it safe after yesterdays bad experience and just hit another Cracker Barrel. I was dying for more of their grilled spicy catfish.

Afterward we got back I walked, feed and walked the dogs. Then jumped on my bike and tried to find the mountain bike trails but only ended up climbing a very long hill on rt 70 and not finding the road the trails where on. We then drove around the park, saw the Cumberland Presbyterian Church which was founded in 1810 in a log cabin which was the home of Reverend Samuel McAdow.   We also stopped in the Inn and Restaurant to get a trial map, and walked the dogs for the final time. Cali our older Shitzu (9 yrs old) loves to walk and would literally walk all day if she could. Wily is only 3 and would rather sit in the air conditioning than walk any day. Although he is pretty good about going in the morning when he knows he will get feed afterwards.

We pretty much had planned to use these first 4 days as a time to rest up and relax before the trip starts in ernest. Tomorrow evening friends of ours that we have made many summer trips with will arrive and Sunday the fun begins. For tomorrow I hope to do some hiking if the weather holds up.  

The cell coverage is pretty sketchy so my wifi hotspot is not working to well, but I will try and post what I can, I will add pictures and further updates when we get to Graceland on Sunday evening.

~ Bill