Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Montgomery Bell State Park


We recently spent a lovely vacation at Montgomery Bell State Park, just north of I-40, about 45 minutes west of Nashville. We stayed in the Inn, where all the rooms have balconies overlooking a lake. Here's the view from our balcony:


This is the view from the walkway outside the 4th floor restaurant:


There are 2 swimming pools, 1 indoor and 1 outdoor, but we didn't use them:


This is the site of the founding of the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination, and there's a church shrine:


and a log cabin:


The log cabin is a replica of the home of one of the founders where the 3 men gathered to pray over their decision.

Walking the trails was great fun. There were a couple of trails I didn't try. The 10 mile trail was just more than I wanted to try (though I did walk along a mile or so of it just to see if it differed much from the others), and another was a out-and-back trail I wasn't interested in. The little Jim Bailey nature trail began by the park visitor center:


All 3 of us walked this 3/4-1 mile loop trail:




There was a longer trail (the Wildcat trail) that joined another trail (the Ore Pit Loop), and I spent 2 1/2 hours exploring those (and part of the 10-mile trail for good measure). I was on my own for this excursion:




see the deer in the picture below?


There were a lot of deer, and they had no fear at all of the cars.

I did get carried away taking pictures of the trails.



The Ore Pit Loop began here:



And tucked up along a spur off the trail was this one solitary gravesite:


I'll post photos of the Spillway Trail in a separate post later today.

4 comments:

  1. Oh so many beautiful places to walk. Being a "walker" I'd have enjoyed staying there. Of course I would have used the pool too. It must have been a great get away.

    Darla

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    1. It was great to get away :) I love places with trails, so parks like this are a treasure for me.

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  2. We have a Nature Trail on the outskirts of Wichita I have contemplated taking once the weather cools. Your trails look beautiful. I'm SO glad you took as many photos as you did. It gave me a real sense of the place and the atmosphere it seemed to put off (a good thing, I might add). This was fun to follow you and explore this area.

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    1. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I took a kajillion photos! The hard part was not including them all lol

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