We were on the move again today, back into Tennessee, this time to stay for a few days. It wasn’t too long of a drive today so we didn’t have to leave too early; and most of the drive was on I65 so we moved along pretty good. Once we did leave the interstate we drove about 25 miles on a two-lane highway and just after we got on we picked up a sheriff. He had plenty of opportunities to go by us but he just kept trucking along behind us. Mike figured he was waiting for him to do something he shouldn’t, but he never pulled us over, just followed along behind us. Mike was so intent on keeping to the speed limit that we managed to miss our turn onto The Natchez Trace, and had to hang a u-turn. At this point the sheriff just took off past us so I figure he was just passing the time and wasn’t in any rush to be someplace else. He definitely added some minutes to our journey, having to stick to the speed limit sucks!
When we did finally get on the Natchez Trace the drive was beautiful. The Trace is a 444-mile road that runs from just south of Nashville to Natchez in Mississippi and is a National Park. It is as natural a road as you could wish to find, no signs, no bill boards, no businesses and a 50 mile an hour speed limit. There are trees on both side of the two-lane road and the leaves are just now starting to change colour and it is really tranquil and beautiful. Definitely a nicer ride than the interstate!
We were only on The Trace for about 10 miles when our turn to the campground came along. We had been warned in the campground book that there was a low bridge of 11 feet to pass under just before the entrance and although Mike had measured the trailer and told me we were less than 11 feet I didn’t really believe him. Turns out he wasn’t lying to me and we passed under the bridge without losing any part of the roof. We got checked in to the campground and then had to drive about 5 miles up and down some steep grades to find the sites. Ok, maybe five miles is an exaggeration, but the sites are a heck of a long way from the front gate. The grounds are huge with not that many sites but the park looks like it could do with a little love (kind of like most of the Thousand Trail parks); it has definitely seen better days. Anyway we got a site with full hook ups and so we can’t really ask for more, although tv and internet would be nice, and we have neither unless we traipse over to the lodge.





We got set up and then took what should have been a short drive to Hohenwald; short if Nell hadn’t got us a little lost. She took us a different way than we had come in with the intention of getting us on The Trace at a different point, trouble was she had accounted for the fact that the road she was trying to get us on was above us with no on ramps. She took us down some dead end road where we got some funny looks from pregnant, smoking teenage girls before having us turn around. Mike got us to the mail road in the end and the detour was nothing if not interesting.
Hohenwald is not a very big town and to get to it we had to take the 20, and all along it were people setting up tables and such with all kinds of things to sell. We’ve seen a lot of garage sales going on in this state, it must be their thing.

Mike: I was waiting for the harmonicas and fiddle’s to start playing we were soo! deep in the woods.