LBL Nickell Branch day 2

Baby it’s cold outside 🥶… tonight will be the coldest night thus far for our trip. Getting down to 37 degrees ❄️. The Wallas stove is heating up the cabin as I write but we’ll turn it off when we go to bed. It wasn’t exactly balmy today either…. Cloudy and windy with a high of 57. With the winds we could see white caps out on the river and watched several people launch and soon after retrieve bass boats. Although not a great boating day it was a very nice day for hiking. Moki and I hit the trail by our boat this afternoon and did a 4.5 mile out and back. A portion of the trail we did last year but we also got our feet on new to us parts. We are in the Land Between the Lakes (LBL) which is a National Park but previously was several small communities. When the Tennessee Valley River Authority took the land for a recreation area they removed all the structures but left the cemeteries…many are still being used by the families who used to live here. The forest roads were once local roads for the many communities. We are at the very northwestern part Lake Barkley a man made lake created when a dam was built on the Cumberland River in 1966 to alleviate devastating flooding. Prior to the dam construction entire communities were moved to higher ground. So we are now boating over old roads, bridges, and homes. Where we are anchored previously was a river valley.Read more