Montgomery Bell State Park Spillway Trail

This trail was a part of a family vacation. The Husband opted out of this particular trail (we didn't want to push too much hot, physical activity during the closing weeks of his chemotherapy treatments), but The Younger Son and I enjoyed it. He forged ahead while I lingered over photo-taking opportunities:

The trail was along a flowing stream almost all the way.

The weather was pleasant with highs in the 80s F, and even more pleasant walking beside this water in the shady woods.

There were fish (in the photo below) and frogs and butterflies and birds.

The spillway wasn't even the end of the trail.

After the spillway we saw the dam and the other side of the dam:



and all kinds of little trails leading down to the water above the spillway where folks were fishing from the bank.

We found the site of an old Bath House:

I have no idea why someone had left a microphone at the old bath house site:

This was a fun trail.

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.